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+Project Gutenberg's The Kingdom of God Is Within You, by graf Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+*******************************************************************
+THIS EBOOK WAS ONE OF PROJECT GUTENBERG'S EARLY FILES PRODUCED AT A
+TIME WHEN PROOFING METHODS AND TOOLS WERE NOT WELL DEVELOPED. THERE
+IS AN IMPROVED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WHICH MAY BE VIEWED AS EBOOK
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+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Kingdom of God Is Within You
+
+Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
+
+Posting Date: July 8, 2011 [EBook #4602]
+Release Date: November, 2003
+[This file was first posted on February 17, 2002]
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jack Eden <jackeden@yahoo.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[For those interested, there is a note at the end of
+this document that details the adaptations made to this
+work]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU"
+CHRISTIANITY NOT AS A MYSTIC RELIGION
+BUT AS A NEW THEORY OF LIFE
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF COUNT LEO TOLSTOI
+BY CONSTANCE GARNETT
+New York, 1894
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+The book I have had the privilege of translating is, undoubtedly,
+one of the most remarkable studies of the social and psychological
+condition of the modern world which has appeared in Europe for
+many years, and its influence is sure to be lasting and far
+reaching.  Tolstoi's genius is beyond dispute.  The verdict of the
+civilized world has pronounced him as perhaps the greatest
+novelist of our generation.  But the philosophical and religious
+works of his later years have met with a somewhat indifferent
+reception.  They have been much talked about, simply because they
+were his work, but, as Tolstoi himself complains, they have never
+been seriously discussed.  I hardly think that he will have to
+repeat the complaint in regard to the present volume.  One may
+disagree with his views, but no one can seriously deny the
+originality, boldness, and depth of the social conception which he
+develops with such powerful logic.  The novelist has shown in this
+book the religious fervor and spiritual insight of the prophet;
+yet one is pleased to recognize that the artist is not wholly lost
+in the thinker.  The subtle intuitive perception of the
+psychological basis of the social position, the analysis of the
+frame of mind of oppressors and oppressed, and of the intoxication
+of Authority and Servility, as well as the purely descriptive
+passages in the last chapter--these could only have come from the
+author of "War and Peace."
+
+The book will surely give all classes of readers much to think of,
+and must call forth much criticism.  It must be refuted by those
+who disapprove of its teaching, if they do not want it to have
+great influence.
+
+One cannot of course anticipate that English people, slow as they
+are to be influenced by ideas, and instinctively distrustful of
+all that is logical, will take a leap in the dark and attempt to
+put Tolstoi's theory of life into practice.  But one may at least
+be sure that his destructive criticism of the present social and
+political RÉGIME will become a powerful force in the work of
+disintegration and social reconstruction which is going on around
+us.  Many earnest thinkers who, like Tolstoi, are struggling to
+find their way out of the contradictions of our social order will
+hail him as their spiritual guide.  The individuality of the
+author is felt in every line of his work, and even the most
+prejudiced cannot resist the fascination of his genuineness,
+sincerity, and profound earnestness.  Whatever comes from a heart
+such as his, swelling with anger and pity at the sufferings of
+humanity, cannot fail to reach the hearts of others.  No reader
+can put down the book without feeling himself better and more
+truth-loving for having read it.
+
+Many readers may be disappointed with the opening chapters of the
+book.  Tolstoi disdains all attempt to captivate the reader.  He
+begins by laying what he considers to be the logical foundation of
+his doctrines, stringing together quotations from little-known
+theological writers, and he keeps his own incisive logic for the
+later part of the book.
+
+One word as to the translation.  Tolstoi's style in his religious
+and philosophical works differs considerably from that of his
+novels.  He no longer cares about the form of his work, and his
+style is often slipshod, involved, and diffuse.  It has been my
+aim to give a faithful reproduction of the original.
+
+CONSTANCE GARNETT.
+January, 1894
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+In the year 1884 I wrote a book under the title "What I Believe,"
+in which I did in fact make a sincere statement of my beliefs.
+
+In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help
+explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the
+Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity.
+
+Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the
+doctrine of Christ I pointed out as the principal one the absence
+of any commandment of non-resistance to evil by force.  The
+perversion of Christ's teaching by the teaching of the Church is
+more clearly apparent in this than in any other point of
+difference.
+
+I know--as we all do--very little of the practice and the spoken and
+written doctrine of former times on the subject of non-resistance to
+evil. I knew what had been said on the subject by the fathers of the
+Church--Origen, Tertullian, and others--I knew too of the existence of
+some so-called sects of Mennonites, Herrnhuters, and Quakers, who do not
+allow a Christian the use of weapons, and do not enter military service;
+but I knew little of what had been done by these so-called sects toward
+expounding the question.
+
+My book was, as I had anticipated, suppressed by the Russian
+censorship; but partly owing to my literary reputation, partly
+because the book had excited people's curiosity, it circulated in
+manuscript and in lithographed copies in Russia and through
+translations abroad, and it evolved, on one side, from those who
+shared my convictions, a series of essays with a great deal of
+information on the subject, on the other side a series of
+criticisms on the principles laid down in my book.
+
+A great deal was made clear to me by both hostile and sympathetic
+criticism, and also by the historical events of late years; and I
+was led to fresh results and conclusions, which I wish now to
+expound.
+
+First I will speak of the information I received on the history of
+the question of non-resistance to evil; then of the views of this
+question maintained by spiritual critics, that is, by professed
+believers in the Christian religion, and also by temporal ones,
+that is, those who do not profess the Christian religion; and
+lastly I will speak of the conclusions to which I have been
+brought by all this in the light of the historical events of late
+years.
+
+L. TOLSTOI.
+YASNAÏA POLIANA,
+May 14/26, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+    I. THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE
+       HAS BEEN PROFESSED BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM
+       THE VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY
+
+   II. CRITICISMS OF THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO
+       EVIL BY FORCE ON THE PART OF BELIEVERS AND OF UNBELIEVERS
+
+  III. CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY BELIEVERS
+
+   IV. CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY MEN OF SCIENCE
+
+    V. CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN
+       CONSCIENCE
+
+   VI. ATTITUDE OF MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY TO WAR
+
+  VII. SIGNIFICANCE OF COMPULSORY SERVICE
+
+ VIII. DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE MUST
+       INEVITABLY BE ACCEPTED BY MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY
+
+   IX. THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF
+       LIFE WILL EMANCIPATE MEN FROM THE MISERIES OF OUR PAGAN
+       LIFE
+
+    X. EVIL CANNOT BE SUPRESSED BY THE PHYSICAL FORCE OF THE
+       GOVERNMENT--THE MORAL PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS BROUGHT ABOUT
+       NOT ONLY BY INDIVIDUAL RECOGNITION OF THE TRUTH BUT ALSO
+       THROUGH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PUBLIC OPINION
+
+   XI. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE HAS ALREADY
+       ARISEN IN OUR SOCIETY, AND WILL INFALLIBLY PUT
+       AN END TO THE PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF OUR LIFE
+       BASED ON FORCE--WHEN THAT WILL BE
+
+  XII. CONCLUSION--REPENT YE, FOR THE KINGDOM OF
+       HEAVEN IS AT HAND
+
+
+
+
+         "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
+       free. "--John viii. 32.
+
+         "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to
+       kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to
+       destroy both soul and body in hell."--MATT. x. 28.
+
+         "Ye have been bought with a price; be not ye the servants
+       of men."--I COR. vii. 23.
+
+
+
+
+
+"THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE HAS BEEN PROFESSED
+BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM THE VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
+
+Of the Book "What I Believe"--The Correspondence Evoked by it--Letters
+from Quakers--Garrison's Declaration--Adin Ballou, his Works, his
+Catechism--Helchitsky's "Net of Faith"--The Attitude of the World to
+Works Elucidating Christ's Teaching--Dymond's Book "On War"--Musser's
+"Non-resistance Asserted"--Attitude of the Government in 1818 to Men who
+Refused to Serve in the Army--Hostile Attitude of Governments Generally
+and of Liberals to Those who Refuse to Assist in Acts of State Violence,
+and their Conscious Efforts to Silence and Suppress these Manifestations
+of Christian Non-resistance.
+
+
+Among the first responses called forth by my book were some letters from
+American Quakers. In these letters, expressing their sympathy with my
+views on the unlawfulness for a Christian of war and the use of force of
+any kind, the Quakers gave me details of their own so-called sect, which
+for more than two hundred years has actually professed the teaching of
+Christ on non-resistance to evil by force, and does not make use of
+weapons in self-defense. The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt
+how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a
+Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force,
+and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and
+capital punishment.
+
+In a whole series of arguments and texts showing that war--that
+is, the wounding and killing of men--is inconsistent with a
+religion founded on peace and good will toward men, the Quakers
+maintain and prove that nothing has contributed so much to the
+obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has
+hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world,
+as the disregard of this command by men calling themselves
+Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.
+
+"Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of
+violence and the sword," they say, "but by means of non-resistance
+to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be
+diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and
+love among its followers."
+
+"A Christian, according to the teaching of God himself, can act
+only peaceably toward all men, and therefore there can be no
+authority able to force the Christian to act in opposition to the
+teaching of God and to the principal virtue of the Christian in
+his relation with his neighbors."
+
+"The law of state necessity," they say, "can force only those to
+change the law of God who, for the sake of earthly gains, try to
+reconcile the irreconcilable; but for a Christian who sincerely
+believes that following Christ's teaching will give him salvation,
+such considerations of state can have no force."
+
+Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their
+works--with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond
+(published in 1827)--showed me not only that the impossibility of
+reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized
+long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago
+proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder
+how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the
+use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the
+churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.
+
+In addition to what I learned from the Quakers I received about
+the same time, also from America, some information on the subject
+from a source perfectly distinct and previously unknown to me.
+
+The son of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous champion of the
+emancipation of the negroes, wrote to me that he had read my book, in
+which he found ideas similar to those expressed by his father in the
+year 1838, and that, thinking it would be interesting to me to know
+this, he sent me a declaration or proclamation of "non-resistance" drawn
+up by his father nearly fifty years ago.
+
+This declaration came about under the following circumstances:
+William Lloyd Garrison took part in a discussion on the means of
+suppressing war in the Society for the Establishment of Peace
+among Men, which existed in 1838 in America.  He came to the
+conclusion that the establishment of universal peace can only be
+founded on the open profession of the doctrine of non-resistance
+to evil by violence (Matt. v. 39), in its full significance, as
+understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison happened to be on
+friendly relations. Having come to this conclusion, Garrison
+thereupon composed and laid before the society a declaration,
+which was signed at the time--in 1838--by many members.
+
+   "DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS ADOPTED BY PEACE CONVENTION.
+   "Boston, 1838.
+
+   "We the undersigned, regard it as due to ourselves, to the
+   cause which we love, to the country in which we live, to
+   publish a declaration expressive of the purposes we aim to
+   accomplish and the measures we shall adopt to carry forward the
+   work of peaceful universal reformation.
+
+   "We do not acknowledge allegiance to any human government.  We
+   recognize but one King and Lawgiver, one Judge and Ruler of
+   mankind.  Our country is the world, our countrymen are all
+   mankind.  We love the land of our nativity only as we love all
+   other lands.  The interests and rights of American citizens are
+   not dearer to us than those of the whole human race.  Hence we
+   can allow no appeal to patriotism to revenge any national
+   insult or injury...
+
+   "We conceive that a nation has no right to defend itself
+   against foreign enemies or to punish its invaders, and no
+   individual possesses that right in his own case, and the unit
+   cannot be of greater importance than the aggregate.  If
+   soldiers thronging from abroad with intent to commit rapine and
+   destroy life may not be resisted by the people or the
+   magistracy, then ought no resistance to be offered to domestic
+   troublers of the public peace or of private security.
+
+   "The dogma that all the governments of the world are
+   approvingly ordained of God, and that the powers that be in the
+   United States, in Russia, in Turkey, are in accordance with his
+   will, is no less absurd than impious.  It makes the impartial
+   Author of our existence unequal and tyrannical. It cannot be
+   affirmed that the powers that be in any nation are actuated by
+   the spirit or guided by the example of Christ in the treatment
+   of enemies; therefore they cannot be agreeable to the will of
+   God, and therefore their overthrow by a spiritual regeneration
+   of their subjects is inevitable.
+
+   "We regard as unchristian and unlawful not only all wars,
+   whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war;
+   every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification, we regard
+   as unchristian and unlawful; the existence of any kind of
+    standing army, all military chieftains, all monuments
+   commemorative of victory over a fallen foe, all trophies won in
+   battle, all celebrations in honor of military exploits, all
+   appropriations for defense by arms; we regard as unchristian
+   and unlawful every edict of government requiring of its
+   subjects military service.
+
+   "Hence we deem it unlawful to bear arms, and we cannot hold any
+   office which imposes on its incumbent the obligation to compel
+   men to do right on pain of imprisonment or death.  We therefore
+   voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and
+   judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly
+   honors, and stations of authority.  If we cannot occupy a seat
+   in the legislature or on the bench, neither can we elect others
+   to act as our substitutes in any such capacity.  It follows
+   that we cannot sue any man at law to force him to return
+   anything he may have wrongly taken from us; if he has seized
+   our coat, we shall surrender him our cloak also rather than
+   subject him to punishment.
+
+   "We believe that the penal code of the old covenant--an eye for
+   an eye, and a tooth for a tooth--has been abrogated by Jesus
+   Christ, and that under the new covenant the forgiveness instead
+   of the punishment of enemies has been enjoined on all his
+   disciples in all cases whatsoever.  To extort money from
+   enemies, cast them into prison, exile or execute them, is
+   obviously not to forgive but to take retribution.
+
+   "The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that
+   physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration, and
+   that the sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by
+   love; that evil can be exterminated only by good; that it is
+   not safe to rely upon the strength of an arm to preserve us
+   from harm; that there is great security in being gentle,
+   long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek
+   who shall inherit the earth; for those who take up the sword
+   shall perish by the sword.
+
+   "Hence as a measure of sound policy--of safety to property,
+   life, and liberty--of public quietude and private enjoyment--as
+   well as on the ground of allegiance to Him who is King of kings
+   and Lord of lords, we cordially adopt the non-resistance
+   principle, being confident that it provides for all possible
+   consequences, is armed with omnipotent power, and must
+   ultimately triumph over every assailing force.
+
+   "We advocate no Jacobinical doctrines.  The spirit of
+   Jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, violence, and murder.
+   It neither fears God nor regards man.  We would be filled with
+   the spirit of Christ.  If we abide evil by our fundamental
+   principle of not opposing evil by evil we cannot participate in
+   sedition, treason, or violence.  We shall submit to every
+   ordinance and every requirement of government, except such as
+   are contrary to the commands of the Gospel, and in no case
+   resist the operation of law, except by meekly submitting to the
+   penalty of disobedience.
+
+   "But while we shall adhere to the doctrine of non-resistance
+   and passive submission to enemies, we purpose, in a moral and
+   spiritual sense, to assail iniquity in high places and in low
+   places, to apply our principles to all existing evil,
+   political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions, and to
+   hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have
+   become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It appears to us
+   a self-evident truth that whatever the Gospel is designed to
+   destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought
+   now to be abandoned.  If, then, the time is predicted when
+   swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning
+   hooks, and men shall not learn the art of war any more, it
+   follows that all who manufacture, sell, or wield these deadly
+   weapons do thus array themselves against the peaceful dominion
+   of the Son of God on earth.
+
+   "Having thus stated our principles, we proceed to specify the
+   measures we propose to adopt in carrying our object into
+   effect.
+
+   "We expect to prevail through the Foolishness of Preaching.  We
+   shall endeavor to promulgate our views among all persons, to
+   whatever nation, sect, or grade of society they may belong.
+   Hence we shall organize public lectures, circulate tracts and
+   publications, form societies, and petition every governing
+   body.  It will be our leading object to devise ways and means
+   for effecting a radical change in the views, feelings, and
+   practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war and the
+   treatment of enemies.
+
+   "In entering upon the great work before us, we are not
+   unmindful that in its prosecution we may be called to test
+   our sincerity even as in a fiery ordeal.  It may subject us to
+   insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself.  We
+   anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation,
+   and calumny.  Tumults may arise against us.  The proud and
+   pharisaical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and
+   powers, may combine to crush us.  So they treated the Messiah
+   whose example we are humbly striving to imitate.  We shall not
+   be afraid of their terror.  Our confidence is in the Lord
+   Almighty and not in man.  Having withdrawn from human
+   protection, what can sustain us but that faith which overcomes
+   the world?  We shall not think it strange concerning the fiery
+   trial which is to try us, but rejoice inasmuch as we are
+   partakers of Christ's sufferings.
+
+   "Wherefore we commit the keeping of our souls to God. For every
+   one that forsakes houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father,
+   or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for Christ's sake,
+   shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting
+   life.
+
+   "Firmly relying upon the certain and universal triumph of the
+   sentiments contained in this declaration, however formidable
+   may be the opposition arrayed against them, we hereby affix our
+   signatures to it; commending it to the reason and conscience of
+   mankind, and resolving, in the strength of the Lord God, to
+   calmly and meekly abide the issue."
+
+Immediately after this declaration a Society for Non-resistance was
+founded by Garrison, and a journal called the NON-RESISTANT, in
+which the doctrine of non-resistance was advocated in its full
+significance and in all its consequences, as it had been expounded
+in the declaration.  Further information as to the ultimate
+destiny of the society and the journal I gained from the excellent
+biography of W. L. Garrison, the work of his son.
+
+The society and the journal did not exist for long.  The
+greater number of Garrison's fellow-workers in the movement for
+the liberation of the slaves, fearing that the too radical
+programme of the journal, the NON-RESISTANT, might keep people
+away from the practical work of negro-emancipation, gave up the
+profession of the principle of non-resistance as it had been
+expressed in the declaration, and both society and journal ceased
+to exist.
+
+This declaration of Garrison's gave so powerful and eloquent an
+expression of a confession of faith of such importance to men,
+that one would have thought it must have produced a strong
+impression on people, and have become known throughout the world
+and the subject of discussion on every side.  But nothing of the
+kind occurred.  Not only was it unknown in Europe, even the
+Americans, who have such a high opinion of Garrison, hardly knew
+of the declaration.
+
+Another champion of non-resistance has been overlooked in the same
+way--the American Adin Ballou, who lately died, after spending fifty
+years in preaching this doctrine. Lord God, to calmly and meekly abide
+the doctrine. How great the ignorance is of everything relating to the
+question of non-resistance may be seen from the fact that Garrison the
+son, who has written an excellent biography of his father in four great
+volumes, in answer to my inquiry whether there are existing now
+societies for non-resistance, and adherents of the doctrine, told me
+that as far as he knew that society had broken up, and that there were
+no adherents of that doctrine, while at the very time when he was
+writing to me there was living, at Hopedale in Massachusetts, Adin
+Ballou, who had taken part in the labors of Garrison the father, and had
+devoted fifty years of his life to advocating, both orally and in print,
+the doctrine of non-resistance. Later on I received a letter from Wilson,
+a pupil and colleague of Ballou's, and entered into correspondence with
+Ballou himself. I wrote to Ballou, and he answered me and sent me his
+works. Here is the summary of some extracts from them:
+
+   "Jesus Christ is my Lord and teacher," says Ballou in one of
+   his essays exposing the inconsistency of Christians who allowed
+   a right of self-defense and of warfare.  "I have promised
+   leaving all else, to follow good and through evil, to death
+   itself.  But I am a citizen of the democratic republic of the
+   United States; and in allegiance to it I have sworn to defend
+   the Constitution of my country, if need be, with my life.
+   Christ requires of me to do unto others as I would they should
+   do unto me.  The Constitution of the United States requires of
+   me to do unto two millions of slaves [at that time there were
+   slaves; now one might venture to substitute the word
+   'laborers'] the very opposite of what I would they should do
+   unto me--that is to help to keep them in their present
+   condition of slavery.  And, in spite of this, I continue to
+   elect or be elected, I propose to vote, I am even ready to be
+   appointed to any office under government.  That will not hinder
+   me from being a Christian.  I shall still profess Christianity,
+   and shall find no difficulty in carrying out my covenant
+   with Christ and with the government.
+
+   "Jesus Christ forbids me to resist evil doers, and to take from
+   them an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, bloodshed for
+   bloodshed, and life for life.
+
+   "My government demands from me quite the opposite, and bases a
+   system of self-defense on gallows, musket, and sword, to be
+   used against its foreign and domestic foes.  And the land is
+   filled accordingly with gibbets, prisons, arsenals, ships of
+   war, and soldiers.
+
+   "In the maintenance and use of these expensive appliances for
+   murder, we can very suitably exercise to the full the virtues
+   of forgiveness to those who injure us, love toward our enemies,
+   blessings to those who curse us, and doing good to those who
+   hate us.
+
+   "For this we have a succession of Christian priests to pray for
+   us and beseech the blessing of Heaven on the holy work of
+   slaughter.
+
+   "I see all this (i. e., the contradiction between profession and
+   practice), and I continue to profess religion and take part in
+   government, and pride myself on being at the same time a devout
+   Christian and a devoted servant of the government.  I do not
+   want to agree with these senseless notions of non-resistance.
+   I cannot renounce my authority and leave only immoral men in
+   control of the government.  The Constitution says the
+   government has the right to declare war, and I assent to this
+   and support it, and swear that I will support it.  And I do not
+   for that cease to be a Christian. War, too, is a Christian
+   duty.  Is it not a Christian duty to kill hundreds of thousands
+   of one's fellow-men, to outrage women, to raze and burn towns,
+   and to practice every possible cruelty?  It is time to dismiss
+   all these false sentimentalities.  It is the truest means of
+   forgiving injuries and loving enemies.  If we only do it in the
+   spirit of love, nothing can be more Christian than such
+   murder."
+
+In another pamphlet, entitled "How many Men are Necessary to
+Change a Crime into a Virtue?" he says: "One man may not kill.  If
+he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer.  If two, ten, a
+hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers.  But a government or
+a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be
+murder, but a great and noble action.  Only gather the people
+together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men
+becomes an innocent action.  But precisely how many people must
+there be to make it so?--that is the question.  One man cannot
+plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can.  But precisely how
+many are needed to make it permissible?  Why is it that one man,
+ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God, but a great number
+may?"
+
+And here is a version of Ballou's catechism composed for his
+flock:
+
+   CATECHISM OF NON-RESISTANCE.
+
+   Q. Whence is the word "non-resistance" derived?
+
+   A. From the command, "Resist not evil." (M. v. 39.)
+
+   Q. What does this word express?
+
+   A. It expresses a lofty Christian virtue enjoined on us by
+   Christ.
+
+   Q. Ought the word "non-resistance" to be taken in its widest
+   sense--that is to say, as intending that we should not offer
+   any resistance of any kind to evil?
+
+   A. No; it ought to be taken in the exact sense of our Saviour's
+   teaching--that is, not repaying evil for evil.  We ought to
+   oppose evil by every righteous means in our power, but not by
+   evil.
+
+   Q. What is there to show that Christ enjoined non-resistance in
+   that sense?
+
+   A. It is shown by the words he uttered at the same time.  He
+   said: "Ye have heard, it was said of old, An eye for an eye,
+   and a tooth for a tooth.  But I say unto you Resist not evil.
+   But if one smites thee on the right cheek, turn him the other
+   also; and if one will go to law with thee to take thy coat from
+   thee, give him thy cloak also."
+
+   Q. Of whom was he speaking in the words, "Ye have heard it was
+   said of old"?
+
+   A. Of the patriarchs and the prophets, contained in the Old
+   Testament, which the Hebrews ordinarily call the Law and the
+   Prophets.
+
+   Q. What utterances did Christ refer to in the words, "It was
+   said of old"?
+
+   A. The utterances of Noah, Moses, and the other prophets, in
+   which they admit the right of doing bodily harm to those who
+   inflict harm, so as to punish and prevent evil deeds.
+
+   Q. Quote such utterances.
+
+   A. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
+   shed."--GEN. ix. 6.
+
+   "He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to
+   death... And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life
+   for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
+   foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
+   --Ex. xxi. 12 and 23-25.
+
+   "He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.  And if
+   a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so
+   shall it be done unto him: breach for breach, eye for eye,
+   tooth for tooth."--LEV. xxiv. 17, 19, 20.
+
+   "Then the judges shall make diligent inquisition; and behold,
+   if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely
+   against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had
+   thought to have done unto his brother... And thine eye shall not
+   pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
+   hand for hand, foot for foot."--DEUT. xix. 18, 21.
+
+   Noah, Moses, and the Prophets taught that he who kills, maims,
+   or injures his neighbors does evil.  To resist such evil, and
+   to prevent it, the evil doer must be punished with death, or
+   maiming, or some physical injury.  Wrong must be opposed by
+   wrong, murder by murder, injury by injury, evil by evil.  Thus
+   taught Noah, Moses, and the Prophets.  But Christ rejects all
+   this.  "I say unto you," is written in the Gospel, "resist not
+   evil," do not oppose injury with injury, but rather bear
+   repeated injury from the evil doer.  What was permitted is
+   forbidden.  When we understand what kind of resistance they
+   taught, we know exactly what resistance Christ forbade.
+
+   Q. Then the ancients allowed the resistance of injury by
+   injury?
+
+   A. Yes. But Jesus forbids it. The Christian has in no case the
+   right to put to death his neighbor who has done him evil, or to
+   do him injury in return.
+
+   Q. May he kill or maim him in self-defense?
+
+   A. No.
+
+   Q. May he go with a complaint to the judge that he who has
+   wronged him may be punished?
+
+   A. No. What he does through others, he is in reality doing
+   himself.
+
+   Q. Can he fight in conflict with foreign enemies or disturbers
+   of the peace?
+
+   A. Certainly not. He cannot take any part in war or in
+   preparations for war.  He cannot make use of a deadly weapon.
+   He cannot oppose injury to injury, whether he is alone or with
+   others, either in person or through other people.
+
+   Q. Can he voluntarily vote or furnish soldiers for the
+   government?
+
+   A. He can do nothing of that kind if he wishes to be faithful
+   to Christ's law.
+
+   Q. Can he voluntarily give money to aid a government resting on
+   military force, capital punishment, and violence in general?
+
+   A. No, unless the money is destined for some special object,
+   right in itself, and good both in aim and means.
+
+   Q. Can he pay taxes to such a government?
+
+   A. No; he ought not voluntarily to pay taxes, but he ought not
+   to resist the collecting of taxes.  A tax is levied by the
+   government, and is exacted independently of the will of the
+   subject.  It is impossible to resist it without having recourse
+   to violence of some kind.  Since the Christian cannot employ
+   violence, he is obliged to offer his property at once to the
+   loss by violence inflicted on it by the authorities.
+
+   Q. Can a Christian give a vote at elections, or take part in
+   government or law business?
+
+   A. No; participation in election, government, or law business
+   is participation in government by force.
+
+   Q. Wherein lies the chief significance of the doctrine of
+   non-resistance?
+
+   A. In the fact that it alone allows of the possibility of
+   eradicating evil from one's own heart, and also from one's
+   neighbor's.  This doctrine forbids doing that whereby evil has
+   endured for ages and multiplied in the world.  He who attacks
+   another and injures him, kindles in the other a feeling of
+   hatred, the root of every evil.  To injure another because he
+   has injured us, even with the aim of overcoming evil, is
+   doubling the harm for him and for oneself; it is begetting, or
+   at least setting free and inciting, that evil spirit which we
+   should wish to drive out.  Satan can never be driven out by
+   Satan.  Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot
+   be vanquished by evil.
+
+   True non-resistance is the only real resistance to evil.  It is
+   crushing the serpent's head.  It destroys and in the end
+   extirpates the evil feeling.
+
+   Q. But if that is the true meaning of the rule of non-resistance,
+   can it always put into practice?
+
+   A. It can be put into practice like every virtue enjoined by
+   the law of God.  A virtue cannot be practiced in all
+   circumstances without self-sacrifice, privation, suffering, and
+   in extreme cases loss of life itself.  But he who esteems life
+   more than fulfilling the will of God is already dead to the
+   only true life.  Trying to save his life he loses it.  Besides,
+   generally speaking, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of
+   a single life or of some material welfare, resistance costs a
+   thousand such sacrifices.
+
+   Non-resistance is Salvation; Resistance is Ruin.
+
+   It is incomparably less dangerous to act justly than unjustly,
+   to submit to injuries than to resist them with violence, less
+   dangerous even in one's relations to the present life.  If all
+   men refused to resist evil by evil our world would be happy.
+
+   Q. But so long as only a few act thus, what will happen to
+   them?
+
+   A. If only one man acted thus, and all the rest agreed
+   to crucify him, would it not be nobler for him to die in the
+   glory of non-resisting love, praying for his enemies, than to
+   live to wear the crown of Caesar stained with the blood of the
+   slain?  However, one man, or a thousand men, firmly resolved
+   not to oppose evil by evil are far more free from danger by
+   violence than those who resort to violence, whether among
+   civilized or savage neighbors.  The robber, the murderer, and
+   the cheat will leave them in peace, sooner than those who
+   oppose them with arms, and those who take up the sword shall
+   perish by the sword, but those who seek after peace, and behave
+   kindly and harmlessly, forgiving and forgetting injuries, for
+   the most part enjoy peace, or, if they die, they die blessed.
+   In this way, if all kept the ordinance of non-resistance, there
+   would obviously be no evil nor crime.  If the majority acted
+   thus they would establish the rule of love and good will even
+   over evil doers, never opposing evil with evil, and never
+   resorting to force.  If there were a moderately large minority
+   of such men, they would exercise such a salutary moral
+   influence on society that every cruel punishment would be
+   abolished, and violence and feud would be replaced by peace and
+   love.  Even if there were only a small minority of them, they
+   would rarely experience anything worse than the world's
+   contempt, and meantime the world, though unconscious of it, and
+   not grateful for it, would be continually becoming wiser and
+   better for their unseen action on it.  And if in the worst case
+   some members of the minority were persecuted to death, in dying
+   for the truth they would have left behind them their doctrine,
+   sanctified by the blood of their martyrdom.  Peace, then, to
+   all who seek peace, and may overruling love be the imperishable
+   heritage of every soul who obeys willingly Christ's word,
+   "Resist not evil."
+
+   ADIN BALLOU.
+
+For fifty years Ballou wrote and published books dealing
+principally with the question of non-resistance to evil by force.
+In these works, which are distinguished by the clearness of their
+thought and eloquence of exposition, the question is looked at
+from every possible side, and the binding nature of this command
+on every Christian who acknowledges the Bible as the revelation of
+God is firmly established.  All the ordinary objections to the
+doctrine of non-resistance from the Old and New Testaments are
+brought forward, such as the expulsion of the moneychangers from
+the Temple, and so on, and arguments follow in disproof of them
+all.  The practical reasonableness of this rule of conduct is
+shown independently of Scripture, and all the objections
+ordinarily made against its practicability are stated and refuted.
+Thus one chapter in a book of his treats of non-resistance in
+exceptional cases, and he owns in this connection that if there
+were cases in which the rule of non-resistance were impossible of
+application, it would prove that the law was not universally
+authoritative.  Quoting these cases, he shows that it is precisely
+in them that the application of the rule is both necessary and
+reasonable.  There is no aspect of the question, either on his
+side or on his opponents', which he has not followed up in his
+writings.  I mention all this to show the unmistakable interest
+which such works ought to have for men who make a profession of
+Christianity, and because one would have thought Ballou's work
+would have been well known, and the ideas expressed by him would
+lave been either accepted or refuted; but such has not been the
+case.
+
+The work of Garrison, the father, in his foundation of the Society
+of Non-resistants and his Declaration, even more than my
+correspondence with the Quakers, convinced me of the fact that the
+departure of the ruling form of Christianity from the law of
+Christ on non-resistance by force is an error that has long been
+observed and pointed out, and that men have labored, and are still
+laboring, to correct.  Ballou's work confirmed me still more in
+this view.  But the fate of Garrison, still more that of Ballou,
+in being completely unrecognized in spite of fifty years of
+obstinate and persistent work in the same direction, confirmed me
+in the idea that there exists a kind of tacit but steadfast
+conspiracy of silence about all such efforts.
+
+Ballou died in August, 1890, and there was as obituary notice of him in
+an American journal of Christian views (RELIGIO-PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL,
+August 23). In this laudatory notice it is recorded that Ballou was the
+spiritual director of a parish, that he delivered from eight to nine
+thousand sermons, married one thousand couples, and wrote about five
+hundred articles; but there is not a single word said of the object to
+which he devoted his life; even the word "non-resistance" is not
+mentioned. Precisely as it was with all the preaching of the Quakers for
+two hundred years and, too, with the efforts of Garrison the father, the
+foundation of his society and journal, and his Declaration, so it is
+with the life-work of Ballou. It seems just as though it did not exist
+and never had existed.
+
+We have an astounding example of the obscurity of works which aim
+at expounding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force, and
+at confuting those who do not recognize this commandment, in the
+book of the Tsech Helchitsky, which has only lately been noticed
+and has not hitherto been printed.
+
+Soon after the appearance of my book in German, I received a
+letter from Prague, from a professor of the university there,
+informing me of the existence of a work, never yet printed, by
+Helchitsky, a Tsech of the fifteenth century, entitled "The Net of
+Faith."  In this work, the professor told me, Helchitsky expressed
+precisely the same view as to true and false Christianity as I had
+expressed in my book "What I Believe."  The professor wrote to me
+that Helchitsky's work was to be published for the first time in
+the Tsech language in the JOURNAL OF THE PETERSBURG ACADEMY OF
+SILENCE.  Since I could not obtain the book itself, I tried to
+make myself acquainted with what was known of Helchitsky, and I
+gained the following information from a German book sent me by the
+Prague professor and from Pypin's history of Tsech literature.
+This was Pypin's account:
+
+   "'The Net of Faith' is Christ's teaching, which ought to draw
+   man up out of the dark depths of the sea of worldliness and his
+   own iniquity.  True faith consists in believing God's Word; but
+   now a time has come when men mistake the true faith for heresy,
+   and therefore it is for the reason to point out what the true
+   faith consists in, if anyone does not know this.  It is hidden
+   in darkness from men, and they do not recognize the true law of
+   Christ.
+
+   "To make this law plain, Helchitsky points to the primitive
+   organization of Christian society--the organization which, he
+   says, is now regarded in the Roman Church as an abominable
+   heresy. This Primitive Church was his special ideal of social
+   organization, founded on equality, liberty, and fraternity.
+   Christianity, in Helchitsky's view, still preserves these
+   elements, and it is only necessary for society to return to its
+   pure doctrine to render unnecessary every other form of social
+   order in which kings and popes are essential; the law of love
+   would alone be sufficient in every case.
+
+   "Historically, Helchitsky attributes the degeneration of
+   Christianity to the times of Constantine the Great, whom he
+   Pope Sylvester admitted into the Christian Church with all his
+   heathen morals and life.  Constantine, in his turn, endowed the
+   Pope with worldly riches and power.  From that time forward
+   these two ruling powers were constantly aiding one another to
+   strive for nothing but outward glory.  Divines and
+   ecclesiastical dignitaries began to concern themselves only
+   about subduing the whole world to their authority, incited men
+   against one another to murder and plunder, and in creed and
+   life reduced Christianity to a nullity. Helchitsky denies
+   completely the right to make war and to inflict the punishment
+   of death; every soldier, even the 'knight,' is only a violent
+   evil doer--a murderer."
+
+The same account is given by the German book, with the addition of
+a few biographical details and some extracts from Helchitsky's
+writings.
+
+Having learnt the drift of Helchitsky's teaching in this way, I
+awaited all the more impatiently the appearance of "The Net of
+Faith" in the journal of the Academy.  But one year passed, then
+two and three, and still the book did not appear.  It was only in 1888
+that I learned that the printing of the book, which had been
+begun, was stopped.  I obtained the proofs of what had been
+printed and read them through.  It is a marvelous book from every
+point of view.
+
+Its general tenor is given with perfect accuracy by Pypin.
+Helchitsky's fundamental idea is that Christianity, by allying
+itself with temporal power in the days of Constantine, and by
+continuing to develop in such conditions, has become completely
+distorted, and has ceased to be Christian altogether.  Helchitsky
+gave the title "The Net of Faith" to his book, taking as his motto
+the verse of the Gospel about the calling of the disciples to be
+fishers of men; and, developing this metaphor, he says:
+
+   "Christ, by means of his disciples, would have caught all the
+   world in his net of faith, but the greater fishes broke the net
+   and escaped out of it, and all the rest have slipped through
+   the holes made by the greater fishes, so that the net has
+   remained quite empty.  The greater fishes who broke the net are
+   the rulers, emperors, popes, kings, who have not renounced
+   power, and instead of true Christianity have put on what is
+   simply a mask of it."
+
+Helchitsky teaches precisely what has been and is taught in these
+days by the non-resistant Mennonites and Quakers, and in former
+tunes by the Bogomilites, Paulicians, and many others.  He teaches
+that Christianity, expecting from its adherents gentleness,
+meekness, peaceableness, forgiveness of injuries, turning the
+other cheek when one is struck, and love for enemies, is
+inconsistent with the use of force, which is an indispensable
+condition of authority.
+
+The Christian, according to Helchitsky's reasoning, not only
+cannot be a ruler or a soldier; he cannot take any part in
+government nor in trade, or even be a landowner; he can only be an
+artisan or a husbandman.
+
+This book is one of the few works attacking official Christianity
+which has escaped being burned.  All such so-called heretical
+works were burned at the stake, together with their authors, so
+that there are few ancient works exposing the errors of official
+Christianity.  The book has a special interest for this reason
+alone.  But apart from its interest from every point of view, it
+is one of the most remarkable products of thought for its depth of
+aim, for the astounding strength and beauty of the national
+language in which it is written, and for its antiquity. And yet
+for more than four centuries it has remained unprinted, and is
+still unknown, except to a few learned specialists.
+
+One would have thought that all such works, whether of the
+Quakers, of Garrison, of Ballou, or of Helchitsky, asserting and
+proving as they do, on the principles of the Gospel, that our
+modern world takes a false view of Christ's teaching, would have
+awakened interest, excitement, talk, and discussion among
+spiritual teachers and their flocks alike.
+
+Works of this kind, dealing with the very essence of Christian
+doctrine, ought, one would have thought, to have been examined and
+accepted as true, or refuted and rejected.  But nothing of the
+kind has occurred, and the same fate has been repeated with all
+those works.  Men of the most diverse views, believers, and, what
+is surprising, unbelieving liberals also, as though by agreement,
+all preserve the same persistent silence about them, and all that
+has been done by people to explain the true meaning of Christ's
+doctrine remains either ignored or forgotten.
+
+But it is still more astonishing that two other books, of
+which I heard on the appearance of my book, should be so little
+known, I mean Dymond's book "On War," published for the first time
+in London in 1824, and Daniel Musser's book on "Non-resistance,"
+written in 1864.  It is particularly astonishing that these books
+should be unknown, because, apart from their intrinsic merits,
+both books treat not so much of the theory as of the practical
+application of the theory to life, of the attitude of Christianity
+to military service, which is especially important and interesting
+now in these clays of universal conscription.
+
+People will ask, perhaps: How ought a subject to behave who
+believes that war is inconsistent with his religion while the
+government demands from him that he should enter military service?
+
+This question is, I think, a most vital one, and the answer to it
+is specially important in these days of universal conscription.
+All--or at least the great majority of the people--are Christians,
+and all men are called upon for military service.  How ought a
+man, as a Christian, to meet this demand?  This is the gist of
+Dymond's answer:
+
+   "His duty is humbly but steadfastly to refuse to serve."
+
+There are some people, who, without any definite reasoning about
+it, conclude straightway that the responsibility of government
+measures rests entirely on those who resolve on them, or that the
+governments and sovereigns decide the question of what is good or
+bad for their subjects, and the duty of the subjects is merely to
+obey. I think that arguments of this kind only obscure men's
+conscience.  I cannot take part in the councils of government, and
+therefore I am not responsible for its misdeeds..  Indeed, but we
+are responsible for our own misdeeds.  And the misdeeds of our
+rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds,
+assist in carrying, them out.  Those who suppose that they are
+bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the
+misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers,
+deceive themselves.  They say:  "We give our acts up to the will
+of others, and our acts cannot be good or bad; there is no merit
+in what is good nor responsibility for what is evil in our
+actions, since they are not done of our own will."
+
+It is remarkable that the very same thing is said in the
+instructions to soldiers which they make them learn--that is, that
+the officer is alone responsible for the consequences of his
+command.  But this is not right.  A man cannot get rid of the
+responsibility, for his own actions.  And that is clear from the
+following example.  If your officer commands you to kill your
+neighbor's child, to kill your father or your mother, would you
+obey?  If you would not obey, the whole argument falls to the
+ground, for if you can disobey the governors in one case, where do
+you draw the line up to which you can obey them?  There is no line
+other than that laid down by Christianity, and that line is both
+reasonable and practicable.
+
+And therefore we consider it the duty of every man who thinks war
+inconsistent with Christianity, meekly but firmly to refuse to
+serve in the army.  And let those whose lot it is to act thus,
+remember that the fulfillment of a great duty rests with them.
+The destiny of humanity in the world depends, so far as it depends
+on men at all, on their fidelity to their religion.  Let them
+confess their conviction, and stand up for it, and not in words
+alone, but in sufferings too, if need be.  If you believe that
+Christ forbade murder, pay no heed to the arguments nor to the
+commands of those who call on you to bear a hand in it.  By such a
+steadfast refusal to make use of force, you call down on
+yourselves the blessing promised to those "who hear these sayings
+and do them," and the time will come when the world will recognize
+you as having aided in the reformation of mankind.
+
+Musser's book is called "Non-resistance Asserted," or "Kingdom of
+Christ and Kingdoms of this World Separated."  This book is
+devoted to the same question, and was written when the American
+Government was exacting military service from its citizens at the
+time of the Civil War.  And it has, too, a value for all time,
+dealing with the question how, in such circumstances, people
+should and can refuse to enter military service. Here is the tenor
+of the author's introductory remarks:
+
+   "It is well known that there are many persons in the United
+   States who refuse to fight on grounds of conscience.  They are
+   called the 'defenseless,' or 'non-resistant' Christians.  These
+   Christians refuse to defend their country, to bear arms, or at
+   the call of government to make war on its enemies.  Till lately
+   this religious scruple seemed a valid excuse to the government,
+   and those who urged it were let off service.  But at the
+   beginning of our Civil War public opinion was agitated on this
+   subject.  It was natural that persons who considered it their
+   duty to bear all the hardships and dangers of war in defense of
+   their country should feel resentment against those persons who
+   had for long shared with them the advantages of the protection
+   of government, and who now in time of need and danger would not
+   share in bearing the labors and dangers of its defense.  It was
+   even natural that they should declare the attitude of such men
+   monstrous, irrational, and suspicious."
+
+A host of orators and writers, our author tells us, arose to oppose this
+attitude, and tried to prove the sinfulness of non-resistance, both from
+Scripture and on common-sense grounds. And this was perfectly natural,
+and in many cases the authors were right--right, that is, in regard to
+persons who did not renounce the benefits they received from the
+government and tried to avoid the hardships of military service, but not
+right in regard to the principle of non-resistance itself. Above all,
+our author proves the binding nature of the rule of non-resistance for a
+Christian, pointing out that this command is perfectly clear, and is
+enjoined upon every Christian by Christ without possibility of
+misinterpretation. "Bethink yourselves whether it is righteous to obey
+man more than God," said Peter and John. And this is precisely what
+ought to be the attitude to every man who wishes to be Christian to the
+claim on him for military service, when Christ has said, "Resist not
+evil by force." As for the question of the principle itself, the author
+regards that as decided. As to the second question, whether people have
+the right to refuse to serve in the army who have not refused the
+benefits conferred by a government resting on force, the author
+considers it in detail, and arrives at the conclusion that a Christian
+following the law of Christ, since he does not go to war, ought not
+either to take advantage of any institutions of government, courts of
+law, or elections, and that in his private concerns he must not have
+recourse to the authorities, the police, or the law. Further on in the
+book he treats of the relation of the Old Testament to the New, the
+value of government for those who are Christians, and makes some
+observations on the doctrine of non-resistance and the attacks made on
+it. The author concludes his book by saying: "Christians do not need
+government, and therefore they cannot either obey it in what is contrary
+to Christ's teaching nor, still less, take part in it." Christ took his
+disciples out of the world, he says. They do not expect worldly
+blessings and worldly happiness, but they expect eternal life. The
+Spirit in whom they live makes them contented and happy in every
+position. If the world tolerates them, they are always happy. If the
+world will not leave them in peace, they will go elsewhere, since they
+are pilgrims on the earth and they have no fixed place of habitation.
+They believe that "the dead may bury their dead." One thing only is
+needful for them, "to follow their Master."
+
+Even putting aside the question as to the principle laid down in these
+two books as to the Christian's duty in his attitude to war, one cannot
+help perceiving the practical importance and the urgent need of deciding
+the question.
+
+There are people, hundreds of thousands of Quakers, Mennonites,
+all our Douhobortsi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any
+definite sect, who consider that the use of force--and,
+consequently, military service--is inconsistent with Christianity.
+Consequently there are every year among us in Russia some men
+called upon for military service who refuse to serve on the ground
+of their religious convictions.  Does the government let them off
+then?  No.  Does it compel them to go, and in case of disobedience
+punish them?  No. This was how the government treated them in
+1818.  Here is an extract from the diary of Nicholas Myravyov of
+Kars, which was not passed by the censor, and is not known in
+Russia:
+
+   "Tiflis, October 2, 1818.
+
+   "In the morning the commandant told me that five peasants
+   belonging to a landowner in the Tamboff government had lately
+   been sent to Georgia.  These men had been sent for soldiers,
+   but they would not serve; they had been several times flogged
+   and made to run the gauntlet, but they would submit readily to
+   the cruelest tortures, and even to death, rather than serve.
+   'Let us go,' they said, 'and leave us alone; we will not hurt
+   anyone; all men are equal, and the Tzar is a man like us; why
+   should we pay him tribute; why should I expose my life to
+   danger to kill in battle some man who has done me no harm?  You
+   can cut us to pieces and we will not be soldiers.  He who has
+   compassion on us will give us charity, but as for the
+   government rations, we have not had them and we do not want to
+   have them.'  These were the words of those peasants, who declare
+   that there are numbers like them Russia.  They brought them
+   four times before the Committee of Ministers, and at last
+   decided to lay the matter before the Tzar who gave orders that
+   they should be taken to Georgia for correction, and commanded
+   the commander-in-chief to send him a report every month of
+   their gradual success in bringing these peasants to a better
+   mind."
+
+How the correction ended is not known, as the whole episode indeed
+was unknown, having been kept in profound secrecy.
+
+This was how the government behaved seventy-five years ago--this
+is how it has behaved in a great cumber of cases, studiously
+concealed from the people.  And this is how the government behaves
+now, except in the case of the German Mennonites, living in the
+province of Kherson, whose plea against military service is
+considered well grounded.  They are made to work off their term of
+service in labor in the forests.
+
+But in the recent cases of refusal on the part of Mennonites to
+serve in the army on religious grounds, the government authorities
+have acted in the following manner:
+
+To begin with, they have recourse to every means of coercion used
+in our times to "correct" the culprit and bring him to "a better
+mind," and these measures are carried out with the greatest
+secrecy.  I know that in the case of one man who declined to serve
+in 1884 in Moscow, the official correspondence on the subject had
+two months after his refusal accumulated into a big folio, and was
+kept absolutely secret among the Ministry.
+
+They usually begin by sending the culprit to the priests, and the
+latter, to their shame be it said, always exhort him to obedience.
+But since the exhortation in Christ's name to forswear Christ is
+for the most part unsuccessful, after he has received the
+admonitions of the spiritual authorities, they send him to the
+gendarmes, and the latter, finding, as a rule, no political cause
+for offense in him, dispatch him back again, and then he is sent
+to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse.  During
+all these vicissitudes he is deprived of liberty and has to endure
+every kind of humiliation and suffering as a convicted criminal.
+(All this has been repeated in four cases.)  The doctors let him
+out of the madhouse, and then every kind of secret shift is
+employed to prevent him from going free--whereby others would be
+encouraged to refuse to serve as he has done--and at the same time
+to avoid leaving him among the soldiers, for fear they too should
+learn from him that military service is not at all their duty by
+the law of God, as they are assured, but quite contrary to it.
+
+The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the
+non-resistant by flogging him to death or some other means, as was
+done in former days.  But to put a man openly to death because he
+believes in the creed we all confess is impossible.  To let a man
+alone who has refused obedience is also impossible.  And so the
+government tries either to compel the man by ill-treatment to
+renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him
+unobserved, without openly putting him to death, and to hide
+somehow both the action and the man himself from other people.
+And so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot
+against him.  They either send him to the frontier or provoke him
+to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and
+shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where
+they can ill treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare
+him mad, and lock him up in a lunatic asylum.  They sent one man
+in this way to Tashkend--that is, they pretended to transfer to
+the Tashkend army; another to Omsk; a third him they convicted of
+insubordination and shut up in prison; a fourth they sent to a
+lunatic asylum.
+
+Everywhere the same story is repeated.  Not only the government,
+but the great majority of liberal, advanced people, as they are
+called, studiously turn away from everything that has been said,
+written, or done, or is being done by men to prove the
+incompatibility of force in its most awful, gross, and glaring
+form--in the form, that is, of an army of soldiers prepared to
+murder anyone, whoever it may be--with the teachings of
+Christianity, or even of the humanity which society professes as
+its creed.
+
+So that the information I have gained of the attitude of the
+higher ruling classes, not only in Russia but in Europe and
+America, toward the elucidation of this question has convinced me
+that there exists in these ruling classes a consciously hostile
+attitude to true Christianity, which is shown pre-eminently in
+their reticence in regard to all manifestations of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CRITICISMS OF THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE ON
+THE PART OF BELIEVERS AND OF UNBELIEVERS.
+
+Fate of the Book "What I Believe"--Evasive Character of Religious
+Criticisms of Principles of my Book--1st Reply: Use of Force
+not Opposed to Christianity--2d Reply: Use of Force Necessary
+to Restrain Evil Doers--3d Reply: Duty of Using Force in
+Defense of One's Neighbor--4th Reply: The Breach of the Command
+of Non-resistance to be Regarded Simply as a Weakness--5th
+Reply: Reply Evaded by Making Believe that the Question has
+long been Decided--To Devise such Subterfuges and to take
+Refuge Behind the Authority of the Church, of Antiquity, and of
+Religion is all that Ecclesiastical Critics can do to get out
+of the Contradiction between Use of Force and Christianity in
+Theory and in Practice--General Attitude of the Ecclesiastical
+World and of the Authorities to Profession of True
+Christianity--General Character of Russian Freethinking
+Critics--Foreign Freethinking Critics--Mistaken Arguments of
+these Critics the Result of Misunderstanding the True Meaning
+of Christ's Teaching.
+
+
+The impression I gained of a desire to conceal, to hush up, what I
+had tried to express in my book, led me to judge the book itself
+afresh.
+
+On its appearance it had, as I had anticipated, been forbidden,
+and ought therefore by law to have been burnt.  But, at the same
+time, it was discussed among officials, and circulated in a great
+number of manuscript and lithograph copies, and in translations
+printed abroad.
+
+And very quickly after the book, criticisms, both religious and
+secular in character, made their appearance, and these the
+government tolerated, and even encouraged.  So that the refutation
+of a book which no one was supposed to know anything about was
+even chosen as the subject for theological dissertations in the
+academies.
+
+The criticisms of my book, Russian and foreign alike, fall under
+two general divisions--the religious criticisms of men who regard
+themselves as believers, and secular criticisms, that is, those of
+freethinkers.
+
+I will begin with the first class.  In my book I made it an
+accusation against the teachers of the Church that their teaching
+is opposed to Christ's commands clearly and definitely expressed
+in the Sermon on the Mount, and opposed in especial to his command
+in regard to resistance to evil, and that in this way they deprive
+Christ's teaching of all value.  The Church authorities accept the
+teaching of the Sermon on the Mount on non-resistance to evil by
+force as divine revelation; and therefore one would have thought
+that if they felt called upon to write about my book at all, they
+would have found it inevitable before everything else to reply to
+the principal point of my charge against them, and to say plainly,
+do they or do they not admit the teaching of the Sermon on the
+Mount and the commandment of non-resistance to evil as binding on
+a Christian.  And they were bound to answer this question, not
+after the usual fashion (i. e., "that although on the one side one
+cannot absolutely deny, yet on the other side one cannot main
+fully assent, all the more seeing that," etc., etc.).  No; they
+should have answered the question as plainly as it was put
+in my book--Did Christ really demand from his disciples
+that they should carry out what he taught them in the Sermon on
+the Mount?  And can a Christian, then, or can he not, always
+remaining a Christian, go to law or make any use of the law, or
+seek his own protection in the law?  And can the Christian, or can
+he not, remaining a Christian, take part in the administration of
+government, using compulsion against his neighbors?  And--the most
+important question hanging over the heads of all of us in these
+days of universal military service--can the Christian, or can he
+not, remaining a Christian, against Christ's direct prohibition,
+promise obedience in future actions directly opposed to his
+teaching?  And can he, by taking his share of service in the army,
+prepare himself to murder men, and even actually murder them?
+
+These questions were put plainly and directly, and seemed to
+require a plain and direct answer; but in all the criticisms of my
+book there was no such plain and direct answer.  No; my book
+received precisely the same treatment as all the attacks upon the
+teachers of the Church for their defection from the Law of Christ
+of which history from the days of Constantine is full.
+
+A very great deal was said in connection with my book of my having
+incorrectly interpreted this and other passages of the Gospel, of
+my being in error in not recognizing the Trinity, the redemption,
+and the immortality of the soul.  A very great deal was said, but
+not a word about the one thing which for every Christian is the
+most essential question in life--how to reconcile the duty of
+forgiveness, meekness, patience, and love for all, neighbors and
+enemies alike, which is so clearly expressed in the words of our
+teacher, and in the heart of each of us--how to reconcile this
+duty with the obligation of using force in war upon men of our own
+or a foreign people.
+
+All that are worth calling answers to this question can be brought
+under the following five heads.  I have tried to bring together in
+this connection all I could, not only from the criticisms on my
+book, but from what has been written in past times on this theme.
+
+The first and crudest form of reply consists in the bold assertion
+that the use of force is not opposed by the teaching of Christ;
+that it is permitted, and even enjoined, on the Christian by the
+Old and New Testaments.
+
+Assertions of this kind proceed, for the most part, from men who
+have attained the highest ranks in the governing or ecclesiastical
+hierarchy, and who are consequently perfectly assured that no one
+will dare to contradict their assertion, and that if anyone does
+contradict it they will hear nothing of the contradiction.  These
+men have, for the most part, through the intoxication of power, so
+lost the right idea of what that Christianity is in the name of
+which they hold their position that what is Christian in
+Christianity presents itself to them as heresy, while everything
+in the Old and New Testaments which can be distorted into an
+antichristian and heathen meaning they regard as the foundation of
+Christianity.  In support of their assertion that Christianity is
+not opposed to the use of force, these men usually, with the
+greatest audacity, bring together all the most obscure passages
+from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in the most
+unchristian way--the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, of Simon
+the Sorcerer, etc.  They quote all those sayings of Christ's which
+can possibly be interpreted as justification of cruelty: the
+expulsion from the Temple; "It shall be more tolerable for the
+land of Sodom than for this city," etc., etc.  According to these
+people's notions, a Christian government is not in the least bound
+to be guided by the spirit of peace, forgiveness of injuries, and
+love for enemies.
+
+To refute such an assertion is useless, because the very
+people who make this assertion refute themselves, or, rather,
+renounce Christ, inventing a Christianity and a Christ of their
+own in the place of him in whose name the Church itself exists, as
+well as their office in it.  If all men were to learn that the
+Church professes to believe in a Christ of punishment and warfare,
+not of forgiveness, no one would believe in the Church and it
+could not prove to anyone what it is trying to prove.
+
+The second, somewhat less gross, form of argument consists in
+declaring that, though Christ did indeed preach that we should
+turn the left cheek, and give the cloak also, and this is the
+highest moral duty, yet that there are wicked men in the world,
+and if these wicked men mere not restrained by force, the whole
+world and all good men would come to ruin through them.  This
+argument I found for the first time in John Chrysostom, and I show
+how he is mistaken in my book "What I believe."
+
+This argument is ill grounded, because if we allow ourselves to
+regard any men as intrinsically wicked men, then in the first
+place we annul, by so doing, the whole idea of the Christian
+teaching, according to which we are all equals and brothers, as
+sons of one father in heaven.  Secondly, it is ill founded,
+because even if to use force against wicked men had been permitted
+by God, since it is impossible to find a perfect and unfailing
+distinction by which one could positively know the wicked from the
+good, so it would come to all individual men and societies of men
+mutually regarding each other as wicked men, as is the case now.
+Thirdly, even if it were possible to distinguish the wicked from
+the good unfailingly, even then it would be impossible to kill or
+injure or shut up in prison these wicked men, because there would
+be no one in a Christian society to carry out such punishment,
+since every Christian, as a Christian, has been commanded to use
+no force against the wicked.
+
+The third kind of answer, still more subtle than the preceding,
+consists in asserting that though the command of non-resistance to
+evil by force is binding on the Christian when the evil is
+directed against himself personally, it ceases to be binding when
+the evil is directed against his neighbors, and that then the
+Christian is not only not bound to fulfill the commandment, but is
+even bound to act in opposition to it in defense of his neighbors,
+and to use force against transgressors by force.  This assertion
+is an absolute assumption, and one cannot find in all Christ's
+teaching any confirmation of such an argument.  Such an argument
+is not only a limitation, but a direct contradiction and negation
+of the commandment.  If every man has the right to have recourse
+to force in face of a danger threatening an other, the question of
+the use of force is reduced to a question of the definition of
+danger for another.  If my private judgment is to decide the
+question of what is danger for another, there is no occasion for
+the use of force which could not be justified on the ground of
+danger threatening some other man.  They killed and burnt witches,
+they killed aristocrats and girondists, they killed their enemies
+because those who were in authority regarded them as dangerous for
+the people.
+
+If this important limitation, which fundamentally undermines the
+whole value of the commandment, had entered into Christ's meaning,
+there must have been mention of it somewhere.  This restriction is
+made nowhere in our Saviour's life or preaching.  On the contrary,
+warning is given precisely against this treacherous and scandalous
+restriction which nullifies the commandment.  The error and
+impossibility of such a limitation is shown in the Gospel with
+special clearness in the account of the judgment of Caiaphas, who
+makes precisely this distinction.  He acknowledged that it was
+wrong to punish the innocent Jesus, but he saw in him a source of
+danger not for himself, but for the whole people, and therefore he
+said: It is better for one man to die, that the whole people
+perish not.  And the erroneousness of such a limitation is still
+more clearly expressed in the words spoken to Peter when he tried
+to resist by force evil directed against Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 52).
+Peter was not defending himself, but his beloved and heavenly
+Master.  And Christ at once reproved him for this, saying, that he
+who takes up the sword shall perish by the sword.
+
+Besides, apologies for violence used against one's neighbor in defense
+of another neighbor from greater violence are always untrustworthy,
+because when force is used against one who has not yet carried out his
+evil intent, I can never know which would be greater--the evil of my act
+of violence or of the act I want to prevent. We kill the criminal that
+society may be rid of him, and we never know whether the criminal of
+to-day would not have been a changed man tomorrow, and whether our
+punishment of him is not useless cruelty. We shut up the dangerous--as
+we think--member of society, but the next day this man might cease to be
+dangerous and his imprisonment might be for nothing. I see that a man I
+know to be a ruffian is pursuing a young girl. I have a gun in my
+hand--I kill the ruffian and save the girl. But the death or the
+wounding of the ruffian has positively taken place, while what would
+have happened if this had not been I cannot know. And what an immense
+mass of evil must result, and indeed does result, from allowing men to
+assume the right of anticipating what may happen. Ninety-nine per cent
+of the evil of the world is founded on this reasoning--from the
+Inquisition to dynamite bombs, and the executions or punishments of tens
+of thousands of political criminals.
+
+A fourth, still more refined, reply to the question, What ought to
+be the Christian's attitude to Christ's command of non-resistance
+to evil by force? consists in declaring that they do not deny the
+command of non-resisting evil, but recognize it; but they only do
+not ascribe to this command the special exclusive value attached
+to it by sectarians.  To regard this command as the indispensable
+condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the
+Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers do now, and as the
+Moravian brothers, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bogomilites,
+and the Paulicians did in the past, is a one-sided heresy.  This
+command has neither more nor less value than all the other
+commands, and the man who through weakness transgresses any
+command whatever, the command of non-resistance included, does not
+cease to be a Christian if he hold the true faith.  This is a very
+skillful device, and many people who wish to be deceived are
+easily deceived by it.  The device consists in reducing a direct
+conscious denial of a command to a casual breach of it.  But one
+need only compare the attitude of the teachers of the Church to
+this and to other commands which they really do recognize, to be
+convinced that their attitude to this is completely different from
+their attitude to other duties.
+
+The command against fornication they do really recognize, and
+consequently they do not admit that in any case fornication can
+cease to be wrong.  The Church preachers never point out cases in
+which the command against fornication can be broken, and always
+teach that we must avoid seductions which lead to temptation to
+fornication.  But not so with the command of non-resistance.  All
+church preachers recognize cases in which that command can be
+broken, and teach the people accordingly.  And they not only do
+not teach teat we should avoid temptations to break it, chief of
+which is the military oath, but they themselves administer it.
+The preachers of the Church never in any other case advocate the
+breaking of any other commandment.  But in connection with the
+commandment of non-resistance they openly teach that we must not
+understand it too literally, but that there are conditions and
+circumstances in which we must do the direct opposite, that is, go
+to law, fight, punish.  So that occasions for fulfilling the
+commandment of non-resistance to evil by force are taught for the
+most part as occasions for not fulfilling it.  The fulfillment of
+this command, they say, is very difficult and pertains only to
+perfection.  And how can it not be difficult, when the breach of
+it is not only not forbidden, but law courts, prisons, cannons,
+guns, armies, and wars are under the immediate sanction of the
+Church?  It cannot be true, then, that this command is recognized
+by the preachers of the Church as on a level with other commands.
+
+The preachers of the Church clearly, do not recognize it; only not
+daring to acknowledge this, they try to conceal their not
+recognizing it.
+
+So much for the fourth reply.
+
+The fifth kind of answer, which is the subtlest, the most often
+used, and the most effective, consists in avoiding answering, in
+making believe that this question is one which has long ago been
+decided perfectly clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is not
+worth while to talk about it.  This method of reply is employed by
+all the more or less cultivated religious writers, that is to say,
+those who feel the laws of Christ binding for themselves.  Knowing
+that the contradiction existing between the teaching of Christ
+which we profess with our lips and the whole order of our lives
+cannot be removed by words, and that touching upon it can only
+make it more obvious, they, with more or less ingenuity, evade it,
+pretending that the question of reconciling Christianity with the
+use of force has been decided already, or does not exist at all.
+
+    [Footnote: I only know one work which differs somewhat from
+    this general definition, and that is not a criticism in the
+    precise meaning of the word, but an article treating of the
+    same subject and having my book in view.  I mean the pamphlet
+    of Mr. Troizky (published at Kazan), "A Sermon for the
+    People."  The author obviously accepts Christ's teaching in
+    its true meaning.  He says that the prohibition of resistance
+    to evil by force means exactly what it does mean; and the same
+    with the prohibition of swearing.  He does not, as others do,
+    deny the meaning of Christ's teaching, but unfortunately he
+    does not draw from this admission the inevitable deductions
+    which present themselves spontaneously in our life when we
+    understand Christ's teaching in that way.  If we must not
+    oppose evil by force, nor swear, everyone naturally asks,
+    "How, then, about military service? and the oath of
+    obedience?"  To this question the author gives no reply; but
+    it must be answered.  And if he cannot answer, then he would
+    do better no to speak on the subject at all, as such silence
+    leads to error.]
+
+The majority of religious critics of my book use this fifth method
+of replying to it. I could quote dozens of such critics, in all of
+whom, without exception, we find the same thing repeated:
+everything is discussed except what constitutes the principal
+subject of the book.  As a characteristic example of such
+criticisms, I will quote the article of a well-known and ingenious
+English writer and preacher--Farrar--who, like many learned
+theologians, is a great master of the art of circuitously evading
+a question.  The article was published in an American journal, the
+FORUM, in October, 1888.
+
+After conscientiously explaining in brief the contents of my book,
+Farrar says:
+
+   "Tolstoy came to the conclusion that a coarse deceit had been
+   palmed upon the world when these words 'Resist not evil,' were
+   held by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of
+   justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national
+   prejudice, and, indeed, with most of the institutions of civil
+   and social life.  He now believes that the kingdom of God would
+   come if all men kept these five commandments of Christ, viz.:
+   1. Live in peace with all men.  2. Be pure.  3. Take no oaths.
+   4. Resist not evil.  5. Renounce national distinctions.
+
+   "Tolstoy," he says, "rejects the inspiration of the Old
+   Testament; hence he rejects the chief doctrines of the Church--that
+   of the Atonement by blood, the Trinity, the descent of the
+   Holy Ghost on the Apostles, and his transmission through the
+   priesthood."  And he recognizes only the words and commands of
+   Christ.  "But is this interpretation of Christ a true one?" he
+   says.  "Are all men bound to act as Tolstoy teaches--i. e., to
+   carry out these five commandments of Christ?"
+
+You expect, then, that in answer to this essential question, which
+is the only one that could induce a man to write an article about
+the book, he will say either that this interpretation of Christ's
+teaching is true and we ought to follow it, or he will say that
+such an interpretation is untrue, will show why, and will give
+some other correct interpretation of those words which I interpret
+incorrectly.  But nothing of this kind is done.  Farrar only
+expresses his "belief" that,
+
+   "although actuated by the noblest sincerity, Count Tolstoy has
+   been misled by partial and one-sided interpretations of the
+   meaning of the Gospel and the mind and will of Christ."  What
+   this error consists in is not made clear; it is only said:
+   "To enter into the proof of this is impossible in this article,
+   for I have already exceeded the space at my command."
+
+And he concludes in a tranquil spirit:
+
+   "Meanwhile, the reader who feels troubled lest it should be his
+   duty also to forsake all the conditions of his life and to take
+   up the position and work of a common laborer, may rest for the
+   present on the principle, SECURUS JUDICAT ORBIS TERRARUM.  With
+   few and rare exceptions," he continues, "the whole of
+   Christendom, from the days of the Apostles down to our own, has
+   come to the firm conclusion that it was the object of Christ to
+   lay down great eternal principles, but not to disturb the bases
+   and revolutionize the institutions of all human society, which
+   themselves rest on divine sanctions as well as on inevitable
+   conditions.  Were it my object to prove how untenable is the
+   doctrine of communism, based by Count Tolstoy upon the divine
+   paradoxes [sic], which can be interpreted only on historical
+   principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching
+   of Jesus, it would require an ampler canvas than I have here at
+   my disposal."
+
+What a pity he has not an "ampler canvas at his disposal"! And what a
+strange thing it is that for all these last fifteen centuries no one has
+had a "canvas ample enough" to prove that Christ, whom we profess to
+believe in, says something utterly unlike what he does say! Still, they
+could prove it if they wanted to. But it is not worth while to prove
+what everyone knows; it is enough to say "SECURUS JUDICAT ORBIS
+TERRARUM."
+
+And of this kind, without exception, are all the criticisms of educated
+believers, who must, as such, understand the danger of their position.
+The sole escape from it for them lies in their hope that they may be
+able, by using the authority of the Church, of antiquity, and of their
+sacred office, to overawe the reader and draw him away from the idea of
+reading the Gospel for himself and thinking out the question in his own
+mind for himself. And in this they are successful; for, indeed, how
+could the notion occur to any one that all that has been repeated from
+century to century with such earnestness and solemnity by all those
+archdeacons, bishops, archbishops, holy synods, and popes, is all of it
+a base lie and a calumny foisted upon Christ by them for the sake of
+keeping safe the money they must have to live luxuriously on the necks
+of other men? And it is a lie and a calumny so transparent that the only
+way of keeping it up consists in overawing people by their earnestness,
+their conscientiousness. It is just what has taken place of late years
+at recruiting sessions; at a table before the zertzal--the symbol of the
+Tzars authority--in the seat of honor under the life-size portrait of
+the Tzar, sit dignified old officials, wearing decorations, conversing
+freely and easily, writing notes, summoning men before them, and giving
+orders. Here, wearing a cross on his breast, near them, is
+prosperous-looking old Priest in a silken cassock, with long gray hair
+flowing on to his cope; before a lectern who wears the golden cross and
+has a Gospel bound in gold.
+
+They summon Iran Petroff.  A young man comes in, wretchedly,
+shabbily dressed, and in terror, the muscles of his face working,
+his eyes bright and restless; and in a broken voice, hardly above
+a whisper, he says: "I--by Christ's law--as a Christian--I
+cannot."  "What is he muttering?" asks the president, frowning
+impatiently and raising his eyes from his book to listen. "Speak
+louder," the colonel with shining epaulets shouts to him. "I--I as
+a Christian--"  And at last it appears that the young man refuses
+to serve in the army because he is a Christian.  "Don't talk
+nonsense.  Stand to be measured.  Doctor, may I trouble you to
+measure him.  He is all right?"  "Yes."  "Reverend father,
+administer the oath to him."
+
+No one is the least disturbed by what the poor scared young man is
+muttering. They do not even pay attention to it.  "They all mutter
+something, but we've no time to listen to it, we have to enroll so
+many."
+
+The recruit tries to say something still.  "It's opposed to the
+law of Christ."  "Go along, go along; we know without your help
+what is opposed to the law and what's not; and you soothe his
+mind, reverend father, soothe him.  Next: Vassily Nikitin."  And
+they lead the trembling youth away. And it does not strike anyone
+--the guards, or Vassily Nikitin, whom they are bringing in, or
+any of the spectators of this scene--that these inarticulate words
+of the young man, at once suppressed by the authorities, contain
+the truth, and that the loud, solemnly uttered sentences of the
+calm, self-confident official and the priest are a lie and a
+deception.
+
+Such is the impression produced not only by Farrar's article, but
+by all those solemn sermons, articles, and books which make their
+appearance from all sides directly there is anywhere a glimpse of
+truth exposing a predominant falsehood.  At once begins the series
+of long, clever, ingenious, and solemn speeches and writings,
+which deal with questions nearly related to the subject, but
+skillfully avoid touching the subject itself.
+
+That is the essence of the fifth and most effective means of
+getting out of the contradictions in which Church Christianity has
+placed itself, by professing its faith in Christ's teaching in
+words, while it denies it in its life, and teaches
+people to do the same.
+
+Those who justify themselves by the first method, directly,
+crudely asserting that Christ sanctioned violence, wars, and
+murder, repudiate Christ's doctrine directly; those who find their
+defense in the second, the third, or the fourth method are
+confused and can easily be convicted of error; but this last
+class, who do not argue, who do not condescend to argue about it,
+but take shelter behind their own grandeur, and make a show of all
+this having been decided by them or at least by someone long ago,
+and no longer offering a possibility of doubt to anyone--they seem
+safe from attack, and will be beyond attack till men come to
+realize that they are under the narcotic influence exerted on them
+by governments and churches, and are no longer affected by it.
+
+Such was the attitude of the spiritual critics--i. e., those
+professing faith in Christ--to my book.  And their attitude could
+not have been different.  They are bound to take up this attitude
+by the contradictory position in which they find themselves
+between belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in
+his clearest utterances, and they want to escape from this
+contradiction.  So that one cannot expect from them free
+discussion of the very essence of the question--that is, of the
+change in men's life which must result from applying Christ's
+teaching to the existing order of the world.  Such free discussion
+I only expected from worldly, freethinking critics who are not
+bound to Christ's teaching in any way, and can therefore take an
+independent view of it.  I had anticipated that freethinking
+writers would look at Christ, not merely, like the Churchmen, as
+the founder of a religion of personal salvation, but, to express
+it in their language, as a reformer who laid down new principles
+of life and destroyed the old, and whose reforms are not yet
+complete, but are still in progress even now.
+
+Such a view of Christ and his teaching follows from my book. But to my
+astonishment, out of the great number of critics of my book there was
+not one, either Russian or foreign, who treated the subject from the
+side from which it was approached in the book--that is, who criticised
+Christ's doctrines as philosophical, moral, and social principles, to
+use their scientific expressions. This was not done in a single
+criticism. The freethinking Russian critics taking my book as though its
+whole contents could be reduced to non-resistance to evil, and
+understanding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil itself (no doubt
+for greater convenience in refuting it) as though it would prohibit
+every kind of conflict with evil, fell vehemently upon this doctrine,
+and for some years past have been very successfully proving that
+Christ's teaching is mistaken in so far as it forbids resistance to
+evil. Their refutations of this hypothetical doctrine of Christ were all
+the more successful since they knew beforehand that their arguments
+could not be contested or corrected, for the censorship, not having
+passed the book, did not pass articles in its defense.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that among us, where one cannot say a
+word about the Holy Scriptures without the prohibition of the
+censorship, for some years past there have been in all the
+journals constant attacks and criticisms on the command of Christ
+simply and directly stated in Matt. v. 39.  The Russian advanced
+critics, obviously unaware of all that has been done to elucidate
+the question of non-resistance, and sometimes even imagining
+apparently that the rule of non-resistance to evil had been
+invented by me personally, fell foul of the very idea of it.  They
+opposed it and attacked it, and advancing with great heat
+arguments which had long ago been analyzed and refuted from every
+point of view, they demonstrated that a man ought invariably to
+defend (with violence) all the injured and oppressed, and that
+thus the doctrine of non-resistance to evil is an immoral
+doctrine.
+
+To all Russian critics the whole import of Christ's command seemed
+reducible to the fact that it would hinder them from the active
+opposition to evil to which they are accustomed.  So that the
+principle of non-resistance to evil by force has been attacked by
+two opposing camps: the conservatives, because this principle
+would hinder their activity in resistance to evil as applied to
+the revolutionists, in persecution and punishment of them; the
+revolutionists, too, because this principle would hinder their
+resistance to evil as applied to the conservatives and the
+overthrowing of them.  The conservatives were indignant at the
+doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the
+energetic destruction of the revolutionary elements, which may
+ruin the national prosperity; the revolutionists were indignant at
+the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the
+overthrow of the conservatives, who are ruining the national
+prosperity.  It is worthy of remark in this connection that the
+revolutionists have attacked the principle of non-resistance to
+evil by force, in spite of the fact that it is the greatest terror
+and danger for every despotism.  For ever since the beginning of
+the world, the use of violence of every kind, from the Inquisition
+to the Schlüsselburg fortress, has rested and still rests on the
+opposite principle of the necessity of resisting evil by force.
+
+Besides this, the Russian critics have pointed out the fact that
+the application of the command of non-resistance to practical life
+would turn mankind aside out of the path of civilization along
+which it is moving.  The path of civilization on which mankind in
+Europe is moving is in their opinion the one along which all
+mankind ought always to move.
+
+So much for the general character of the Russian critics.
+
+Foreign critics started from the same premises, but their
+discussions of my book were somewhat different from those of
+Russian critics, not only in being less bitter, and in showing
+more culture, but even in the subject-matter.
+
+In discussing my book and the Gospel teaching generally, as it is
+expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, the foreign critics
+maintained that such doctrine is not peculiarly Christian
+(Christian doctrine is either Catholicism or Protestantism
+according to their views)--the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount
+is only a string of very pretty impracticable dreams DU CHARMANT
+DOCTEUR, as Reran says, fit for the simple and half-savage
+inhabitants of Galilee who lived eighteen hundred years ago, and
+for the half-savage Russian peasants--Sutaev and Bondarev--and the
+Russian mystic Tolstoy, but not at all consistent with a high
+degree of European culture.
+
+The foreign freethinking critics have tried in a delicate manner,
+without being offensive to me, to give the impression that my
+conviction that mankind could be guided by such a naïve doctrine
+as that of the Sermon on the Mount proceeds from two causes: that
+such a conviction is partly due to my want of knowledge, my
+ignorance of history, my ignorance of all the vain attempts to
+apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount to life, which
+have been made in history and have led to nothing; and partly it
+is due to my failing to appreciate the full value of the lofty
+civilization to which mankind has attained at present, with its
+Krupp cannons, smokeless powder, colonization of Africa, Irish
+Coercion Bill, parliamentary government, journalism, strikes, and
+the Eiffel Tower.
+
+So wrote de Vogüé and Leroy Beaulieu and Matthew Arnold; so wrote
+the American author Savage, and Ingersoll, the popular
+freethinking American preacher, and many others.
+
+"Christ's teaching is no use, because it is inconsistent with our
+industrial age," says Ingersoll naïvely, expressing in this
+utterance, with perfect directness and simplicity, the exact
+notion of Christ's teaching held by persons of refinement and
+culture of our times.  The teaching is no use for our industrial
+age, precisely as though the existence of this industrial age were
+a sacred fact which ought not to and could not be changed.  It is
+just as though drunkards when advised how they could be brought to
+habits of sobriety should answer that the advice is incompatible
+with their habit of taking alcohol.
+
+The arguments of all the freethinking critics, Russian and foreign
+alike, different as they may be in tone and manner of
+presentation, all amount essentially to the same strange
+misapprehension--namely, that Christ's teaching, one of the
+consequences of which is non-resistance to evil, is of no use to
+us because it requires a change of our life.
+
+Christ's teaching is useless because, if it were carried into practice,
+life could not go on as at present; we must add: if we have begun by
+living sinfully, as we do live and are accustomed to live. Not only is
+the question of non-resistance to evil not discussed; the very mention
+of the fact that the duty of non-resistance enters into Christ's
+teaching is regarded as satisfactory proof of the impracticability of
+the whole teaching.
+
+Meanwhile one would have thought it was necessary to point out at
+least some kind of solution of the following question, since it is
+at the root of almost everything that interests us.
+
+The question amounts to this: In what way are we to decide men's
+disputes, when some men consider evil what others consider good,
+and VICE VERSA?  And to reply that that is evil which I think
+evil, in spite of the fact that my opponent thinks it good, is not
+a solution of the difficulty.  There can only be two solutions:
+either to find a real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or
+not to resist evil by force.
+
+The first course has been tried ever since the beginning of
+historical times, and, as we all know, it has not hitherto led to
+any successful results.
+
+The second solution--not forcibly to resist what we consider evil
+until we have found a universal criterion--that is the solution
+given by Christ.
+
+We may consider the answer given by Christ unsatisfactory; we may
+replace it by another and better, by finding a criterion by which
+evil could be defined for all men unanimously and simultaneously;
+we may simply, like savage nations, not recognize the existence of
+the question.  But we cannot treat the question as the learned
+critics of Christianity do.  They pretend either that no such
+question exists at all or that the question is solved by granting
+to certain persons or assemblies of persons the right to define
+evil and to resist it by force.  But we know all the while that
+granting such a right to certain persons does not decide the
+question (still less so when we are ourselves the certain
+persons), since there are always people who do not recognize this
+right in the authorized persons or assemblies.
+
+But this assumption, that what seems evil to us is really evil,
+shows a complete misunderstanding of the question, and lies at the
+root of the argument of freethinking critics about the Christian
+religion.  In this way, then, the discussions of my book on the
+part of Churchmen and freethinking critics alike showed me that
+the majority of men simply do not understand either Christ's
+teaching or the questions which Christ's teaching solves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY BELIEVERS.
+
+Meaning of Christian Doctrine, Understood by a Minority, has Become
+Completely Incomprehensible for the Majority of Men--Reason of this to
+be Found in Misinterpretation of Christianity and Mistaken Conviction of
+Believers and Unbelievers Alike that they Understand it--The Meaning of
+Christianity Obscured for Believers by the Church--The First Appearance
+of Christ's Teaching--Its Essence and Difference from Heathen
+Religions--Christianity not Fully Comprehended at the Beginning, Became
+More and More Clear to those who Accepted it from its Correspondence
+with Truth--Simultaneously with this Arose the Claim to Possession of
+the Authentic Meaning of the Doctrine Based on the Miraculous Nature of
+its Transmission--Assembly of Disciples as Described in the Acts--The
+Authoritative Claim to the Sole Possession of the True Meaning of
+Christ's Teaching Supported by Miraculous Evidence has Led by Logical
+Development to the Creeds of the Churches--A Church Could Not be Founded
+by Christ--Definitions of a Church According to the Catechisms--The
+Churches have Always been Several in Number and Hostile to One
+Another--What is Heresy--The Work of G. Arnold on Heresies--Heresies the
+Manifestations of Progress in the Churches--Churches Cause Dissension
+among Men, and are Always Hostile to Christianity--Account of the Work
+Done by the Russian Church--Matt. xxiii. 23--The Sermon on the Mount or
+the Creed--The Orthodox Church Conceals from the People the True Meaning
+of Christianity--The Same Thing is Done by the Other Churches--All the
+External Conditions of Modern Life are such as to Destroy the Doctrine
+of the Church, and therefore the Churches use Every Effort to Support
+their Doctrines.
+
+
+Thus the information I received, after my book came out, went to
+show that the Christian doctrine, in its direct and simple sense,
+was understood, and had always been understood, by a minority of
+men, while the critics, ecclesiastical and freethinking alike,
+denied the possibility of taking Christ's teaching in its direct
+sense.  All this convinced me that while on one hand the true
+understanding of this doctrine had never been lost to a minority,
+but had been established more and more clearly, on the other hand
+the meaning of it had been more and more obscured for the
+majority.  So that at last such a depth of obscurity has been
+reached that men do not take in their direct sense even the
+simplest precepts, expressed in the simplest words, in the Gospel.
+
+Christ's teaching is not generally understood in its true, simple,
+and direct sense even in these days, when the light of the Gospel
+has penetrated even to the darkest recesses of human
+consciousness; when, in the words of Christ, that which was spoken
+in the ear is proclaimed from the housetops; and when the Gospel
+is influencing every side of human life--domestic, economic,
+civic, legislative, and international.  This lack of true
+understanding of Christ's words at such a time would be
+inexplicable, if there were not causes to account for it.
+
+One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers
+alike are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ's
+teaching a long time, and that they understand it so fully,
+indubitably, and conclusively that it can have no other
+significance than the one they attribute to it.  And the reason of
+this conviction is that the false interpretation and consequent
+misapprehension of the Gospel is an error of such long standing.
+Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup
+which is already full.
+
+The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man
+if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing
+cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly
+persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
+before him.
+
+The Christian doctrine is presented to the men of our world to-day
+as a doctrine which everyone has known so long and accepted so
+unhesitatingly in all its minutest details that it cannot be
+understood in any other way than it is understood now.
+
+Christianity is understood now by all who profess the doctrines of
+the Church as a supernatural miraculous revelation of everything
+which is repeated in the Creed.  By unbelievers it is regarded as
+an illustration of man's craving for a belief in the supernatural,
+which mankind has now outgrown, as an historical phenomenon which
+has received full expression in Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and
+Protestantism, and has no longer any living significance for us.
+The significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the
+Church, from unbelievers by Science.
+
+I will speak first of the former.  Eighteen hundred years ago
+there appeared in the midst of the heathen Roman world a strange
+new doctrine, unlike any of the old religions, and attributed to a
+man, Christ.
+
+This new doctrine was in both form and content absolutely new to
+the Jewish world in which it originated, and still more to the
+Roman world in which it was preached and diffused.
+
+In the midst of the elaborate religious observances of Judaism, in
+which, in the words of Isaiah, law was laid upon law, and in the midst
+of the Roman legal system worked out to the highest point of perfection,
+a new doctrine appeared, which denied not only every deity, and all fear
+and worship of them, but even all human institutions and all necessity
+for them. In place of all the rules of the old religions, this doctrine
+sets up only a type of inward perfection, truth, and love in the person
+of Christ, and--as a result of this inward perfection being attained by
+men--also the outward perfection foretold by the Prophets--the kingdom
+of God, when all men will cease to learn to make war, when all shall be
+taught of God and united in love, and the lion will lie down with the
+lamb. Instead of the threats of punishment which all the old laws of
+religions and governments alike laid down for non-fulfillment of their
+rules, instead of promises of rewards for fulfillment of them, this
+doctrine called men to it only because it was the truth. John vii. 17:
+"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it
+be of God." John viii. 46: "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe
+me? But ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth. Ye shall
+know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. God is a spirit, and
+they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Keep my
+sayings, and ye shall know of my sayings whether they be true." No
+proofs of this doctrine were offered except its truth, the
+correspondence of the doctrine with the truth. The whole teaching
+consisted in the recognition of truth and following it, in a greater and
+greater attainment of truth, and a closer and closer following of it in
+the acts of life. There are no acts in this doctrine which could justify
+a man and make him saved. There is only the image of truth to guide-him,
+for inward perfection in the person of Christ, and for outward
+perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of God. The fulfillment
+of this teaching consists only in walking in the chosen way, in getting
+nearer to inward perfection in the imitation of Christ, and outward
+perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of God. The greater or
+less blessedness of a man depends, according to this doctrine, not on
+the degree of perfection to which he has attained, but on the greater or
+less swiftness with which he is pursuing it.
+
+The progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman
+that was a sinner, of the robber on the cross, is a greater state of
+blessedness, according to this doctrine, than the stationary
+righteousness of the Pharisee. The lost sheep is dearer than ninety-nine
+that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money that was lost
+and found again, are dearer, more precious to God than those which have
+not been lost.
+
+Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular
+step in the attainment of inward and outward perfection, and
+therefore has no significance of itself.  Blessedness consists in
+progress toward perfection; to stand still in any condition
+whatever means the cessation of this blessedness.
+
+"Let not thy left hand know what they right hand doeth."  "No man
+having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the
+Kingdom of God."  "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to
+you, but seek rather that your names be written in heaven."  "Be
+ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect."  "Seek ye
+first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness."
+
+The fulfillment of this precept is only to be found in
+uninterrupted progress toward the attainment of ever higher truth,
+toward establishing more and more firmly an ever greater love
+within oneself, and establishing more and more widely the kingdom
+of God outside oneself.
+
+It is obvious that, appearing as it did in the midst of the Jewish
+and heathen world, such teaching could not be accepted by the
+majority of men, who were living a life absolutely different from
+what was required by it.  It is obvious, too, that even for those
+by whom it was accepted, it was so absolutely opposed to all their
+old views that it could not be comprehensible in its full
+significance.
+
+It has been only by a succession of misunderstandings, errors,
+partial explanations, and the corrections and additions of
+generations that the meaning of the Christian doctrine has grown
+continually more and more clear to men.  The Christian view of
+life has exerted an influence on the Jewish and heathen, and the
+heathen and Jewish view of life has, too, exerted an influence on
+the Christian.  And Christianity, as the living force, has gained
+more and more upon the extinct Judaism and heathenism, and has
+grown continually clearer and clearer, as it freed itself from the
+admixture of falsehood which had overlaid it.  Men went further
+and further in the attainment of the meaning of Christianity, and
+realized it more and more in life.
+
+The longer mankind lived, the clearer and clearer became the
+meaning of Christianity, as must always be the case with every
+theory of life.
+
+Succeeding generations corrected the errors of their predecessors,
+and grew ever nearer and nearer to a comprehension of the true
+meaning.  It was thus from the very earliest times of
+Christianity.  And so, too, from the earliest times of
+Christianity there were men who began to assert on their own
+authority that the meaning they attribute to the doctrine is the
+only true one, and as proof bring forward supernatural occurrences
+in support of the correctness of their interpretation.
+
+This was the principal cause at first of the misunderstanding of
+the doctrine, and afterward of the complete distortion of it.
+
+It was supposed that Christ's teaching was transmitted to men not
+like every other truth, but in a special miraculous way.  Thus the
+truth of the teaching was not proved by its correspondence with
+the needs of the mind and the whole nature of man, but by the
+miraculous manner of its transmission, which was advanced as an
+irrefutable proof of the truth of the interpretation put on it.
+This hypothesis originated from misunderstanding of the teaching,
+and its result was to make it impossible to understand it rightly.
+
+And this happened first in the earliest times, when the doctrine
+was still not so fully understood and often interpreted wrongly,
+as we see by the Gospels and the Acts.  The less the doctrine was
+understood, the more obscure it appeared and the more necessary
+were external proofs of its truth.  The proposition that we ought
+not to do unto others as we would not they should do unto us, did
+not need to be proved by miracles and needed no exercise of faith,
+because this proposition is in itself convincing and in harmony
+with man's mind and nature; but the proposition that Christ was
+God had to be proved by miracles completely beyond our
+comprehension.
+
+The more the understanding of Christ's teaching was obscured, the
+more the miraculous was introduced into it; and the more the
+miraculous was introduced into it, the more the doctrine was
+strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became; and the
+more it was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it
+became, the more strongly its infallibility had to be asserted,
+and the less comprehensible the doctrine became.
+
+One can see by the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles how from
+the earliest times the non-comprehension of the doctrine called
+forth the need for proofs through the miraculous and
+incomprehensible.
+
+The first example in the book of Acts is the assembly which
+gathered together in Jerusalem to decide the question which had
+arisen, whether to baptize or not the uncircumcised and those who
+had eaten of food sacrificed to idols.
+
+The very fact of this question being raised showed that
+those who discussed it did not understand the teaching of Christ,
+who rejected all outward observances--ablutions, purifications,
+fasts, and sabbaths.  It was plainly said, "Not that which goeth
+into a man's mouth, but that which cometh out of a man's mouth,
+defileth him," and therefore the question of baptizing the
+uncircumcised could only have arisen among men who, though they
+loved their Master and dimly felt the grandeur of his teaching,
+still did not understand the teaching itself very clearly. And
+this was the fact.
+
+Just in proportion to the failure of the members of the assembly
+to understand the doctrine was their need of external confirmation
+of their incomplete interpretation of it.  And then to settle this
+question, the very asking of which proved their misunderstanding
+of the doctrine, there was uttered in this assembly, as is
+described in the Acts, that strange phrase, which was for the
+first time found necessary to give external confirmation to
+certain assertions, and which has been productive of so much evil.
+
+That is, it was asserted that the correctness of what they had
+decided was guaranteed by the miraculous participation of the Holy
+Ghost, that is, of God, in their decision.  But the assertion that
+the Holy Ghost, that is, God, spoke through the Apostles, in its
+turn wanted proof.  And thus it was necessary, to confirm this,
+that the Holy Ghost should descend at Pentecost in tongues of fire
+upon those who made this assertion.  (In the account of it, the
+descent of the Holy Ghost precedes the assembly, but the book of
+Acts was written much later than both events.)  But the descent of
+the Holy Ghost too had to be proved for those who had not seen the
+tongues of fire (though it is not easy to understand why a tongue
+of fire burning above a man's head should prove that what that man
+is going to say will be infallibly the truth).  And so arose the
+necessity for still more miracles and changes, raisings of the
+dead to life, and strikings of the living dead, and all those
+marvels which have been a stumbling-block to men, of which the
+Acts is full, and which, far from ever convincing one of the truth
+of the Christian doctrine, can only repel men from it.  The result
+of such a means of confirming the truth was that the more these
+confirmations of truth by tales of miracles were heaped up one
+after another, the more the doctrine was distorted from its
+original meaning, aid the more incomprehensible it became.
+
+Thus it was from the earliest times, and so it went on, constantly
+increasing, till it reached in our day the logical climax of the dogmas
+of transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope, or of the
+bishops, or of Scripture, and of requiring a blind faith rendered
+incomprehensible and utterly meaningless, not in God, but in Christ, not
+in a doctrine, but in a person, as in Catholicism, or in persons, as in
+Greek Orthodoxy, or in a book, as in Protestantism. The more widely
+Christianity was diffused, and the greater the number of people
+unprepared for it who were brought under its sway, the less it was
+understood, the more absolutely was its infallibility insisted on, and
+the less possible it became to understand the true meaning of the
+doctrine. In the times of Constantine the whole interpretation of the
+doctrine had been already reduced to a RÉSUMÉ--supported by the temporal
+authority--of the disputes that had taken place in the Council--to a
+creed which reckoned off--I believe in so and so, and so and so, and so
+and so to the end--to one holy, Apostolic Church, which means the
+infallibility of those persons who call themselves the Church. So that
+it all amounts to a man no longer believing in God nor Christ, as they
+are revealed to him, but believing in what the Church orders him to
+believe in.
+
+But the Church is holy; the Church was founded by Christ.  God
+could not leave men to interpret his teaching at random--therefore
+he founded the Church.  All those statements are so utterly untrue
+and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them.  Nowhere nor in
+anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that
+God or Christ founded anything like what Churchmen understand by
+the Church.  In the Gospels there is a warning against the Church,
+as it is an external authority, a warning most clear and obvious
+in the passage where it is said that Christ's followers should
+"call no man master."  But nowhere is anything said of the
+foundation of what Churchmen call the Church.
+
+The word church is used twice in the Gospels--once in the sense of
+an assembly of men to decide a dispute, the other time in
+connection with the obscure utterance about a stone--Peter, and
+the gates of hell.  From these two passages in which the word
+church is used, in the signification merely of an assembly, has
+been deduced all that we now understand by the Church.
+
+But Christ could not have founded the Church, that is, what we now
+understand by that word.  For nothing like the idea of the Church
+as we know it now, with its sacraments, miracles, and above all
+its claim to infallibility, is to be found either in Christ's
+words or in the ideas of the men of that time.
+
+The fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same
+word as Christ used for something totally different, does not give
+them the right to assert that Christ founded the one, true Church.
+
+Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as the
+Church for the foundation of all his teaching and the whole faith,
+he would certainly have described this institution clearly and
+definitely, and would have given the only true Church, besides
+tales of miracles, which are used to support every kind of
+superstition, some tokens so unmistakable that no doubt of its
+genuineness could ever have arisen.  But nothing of the sort was
+done by him.  And there have been and still are different
+institutions, each calling itself the true Church.
+
+The Catholic catechism says: "L'Église est la société des fidéles
+établie par notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, répandue sur toute la
+terre et soumise à l'authorité des pasteurs légitimes,
+principalement notre Saint Père le Pape," [see Footnote]
+understanding by the words "pasteurs légitimes" an association of
+men having the Pope at its head, and consisting of certain
+individuals bound together by a certain organization.
+
+    [Footnote: "The Church is the society of the faithful,
+    established by our Lord Jesus Christ, spread over the
+    whole earth, and subject to the authority of its lawful
+    pastors, and chief of them our Holy Father the Pope."]
+
+The Greek Orthodox catechism says: "The Church is a society
+founded upon earth by Jesus Christ, which is united into one
+whole, by one divine doctrine and by sacraments, under the rule
+and guidance of a priesthood appointed by God," meaning by the
+"priesthood appointed by God" the Greek Orthodox priesthood,
+consisting of certain individuals who happen to be in such or such
+positions.
+
+The Lutheran catechism says: "The Church is holy Christianity, or
+the collection of all believers under Christ, their head, to whom
+the Holy Ghost through the Gospels and sacraments promises,
+communicates, and administers heavenly salvation," meaning that
+the Catholic Church is lost in error, and that the true means of
+salvation is in Lutheranism.
+
+For Catholics the Church of God coincides with the Roman
+priesthood and the Pope.  For the Greek Orthodox believer the
+Church of God coincides with the establishment and priesthood of
+Russia. [See Footnote]
+
+    [Footnote: Homyakov's definition of the Church, which
+    was received with some favor among Russians, does not
+    improve matters, if we are to agree with Homyakov in
+    considering the Greek Orthodox Church as the one true
+    Church.  Homyakov asserts that a church is a collection
+    of men (all without distinction of clergy and laymen)
+    united together by love, and that only to men united by
+    love is the truth revealed (let us love each other, that
+    in the unity of thought, etc.), and that such a church
+    is the church which, in the first place, recognizes the
+    Nicene Creed, and in the second place does not, after
+    the division of the churches, recognize the popes and
+    new dogmas.  But with such a definition of the church,
+    there is still more difficulty in reconciling, as
+    Homyakov tries to do, the church united by love with
+    the church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the
+    doctrine of Photius.  So that Homyakov's assertion that
+    this church, united by love, and consequently holy,
+    is the same church as the Greek Orthodox priesthood
+    profess faith in, is even more arbitrary than the
+    assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox.  If we
+    admit the idea of a church in the sense Homyakov
+    gives to it--that is, a body of men bound together
+    by love and truth--then all that any man can predicate
+    in regard to this body, if such an one exists, is
+    its love and truth, but there can be no outer signs
+    by which one could reckon oneself or another as a
+    member of this holy body, nor by which one could put
+    anyone outside it; so that no institution having
+    an external existence can correspond to this idea.]
+
+For Lutherans the Church of God coincides with a body of men who
+recognize the authority of the Bible and Luther's catechism.
+
+Ordinarily, when speaking of the rise of Christianity, men
+belonging to one of the existing churches use the word church in
+the singular, as though there were and had been only one church.
+But this is absolutely incorrect.  The Church, as an institution
+which asserted that it possessed infallible truth, did not make
+its appearance singly; there were at least two churches directly
+this claim was made.
+
+While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one,
+it had no need to declare itself as a church.  It was only when
+believers were split up into opposing parties, renouncing one
+another, that it seemed necessary to each party to confirm their
+own truth by ascribing to themselves infallibility.  The
+conception of one church only arose when there were two sides
+divided and disputing, who each called the other side heresy, and
+recognized their own side only as the infallible church.
+
+If we knew that there was a church which decided in the year 51 to
+receive the uncircumcised, it is only so because there was another
+church--of the Judaists--who decided to keep the uncircumcised
+out.
+
+If there is a Catholic Church now which asserts its own infallibility,
+that is only because there are churches--Greco-Russian, Old Orthodox,
+and Lutheran--each asserting its own infallibility and denying that of
+all other churches. So that the one Church is only a fantastic
+imagination which has not the least trace of reality about it.
+
+As a real historical fact there has existed, and still exist,
+several bodies of men, each asserting that it is the one Church,
+founded by Christ, and that all the others who call themselves
+churches are only sects and heresies.
+
+The catechisms of the churches of the most world-wide influence--the
+Catholic, the Old Orthodox, and the Lutheran--openly assert this.
+
+In the Catholic catechism it is said: "Quels sont ceux qui sont
+hors de l'église?  Les infidèles, les hérétiques, les
+schismatiques." [Footnote: "Who are those who are outside the
+Church? Infidels, heretics, and schismatics."]  The so-called
+Greek Orthodox are regarded as schismatics, the Lutherans as
+heretics; so that according to the Catholic catechism the only
+people in the Church are Catholics.
+
+In the so-called Orthodox catechism it is said: By the one
+Christian Church is understood the Orthodox, which remains fully
+in accord with the Universal Church.  As for the Roman Church and
+other sects (the Lutherans and the rest they do not even dignify
+by the name of church), they cannot be included in the one true
+Church, since they have themselves separated from it.
+
+According to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are
+outside the Church, and there are only Orthodox in the Church.
+
+The Lutheran catechism says: "Die wahre kirche wird darein
+erkannt, dass in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne
+Menschenzusätze gelehrt and die Sacramente treu nach Christi
+Einsetzung gewahret werden." [Footnote: "The true Church will be
+known by the Word of God being studied clear and unmixed with
+man's additions and the sacraments being maintained faithful to
+Christ's teaching."]
+
+According to this definition all those who have added anything to
+the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek
+churches have done, are outside the Church.  And in the Church
+there are only Protestants.
+
+The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has been transmitted
+without a break in their priesthood.  The Orthodox assert that the
+same Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their
+priesthood.  The Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost was
+transmitted in their priesthood (they asserted this with just as
+much right as the churches in authority now).  The Protestants of
+every kind--Lutherans, Reformed Church, Presbyterians, Methodists,
+Swedenborgians, Mormons--assert that the Holy Ghost is only
+present in their communities.  If the Catholics assert that the
+Holy Ghost, at the time of the division of the Church into Arian
+and Greek, left the Church that fell away and remained in the one
+true Church, with precisely the same right the Protestants of
+every denomination can assert that at the time of the separation
+of their Church from the Catholic the Holy Ghost left the Catholic
+and passed into the Church they professed.  And this is just what
+they do.
+
+Every church traces its creed through an uninterrupted
+transmission from Christ and the Apostles.  And truly every
+Christian creed that has been derived from Christ must have come
+down to the present generation through a certain transmission.
+But that does not prove that it alone of all that has been
+transmuted, excluding all the rest, can be the sole truth,
+admitting of no doubt.
+
+Every branch in a tree comes from the root in unbroken connection;
+but the fact that each branch comes from the one root, does not
+prove at all that each branch was the only one.  It is precisely
+the same with the Church.  Every church presents exactly the same
+proofs of the succession, and even the same miracles, in support
+of its authenticity, as every other.  So that there is but one
+strict and exact definition of what is a church (not of something
+fantastic which we would wish it to be, but of what it is and has
+been in reality)--a church is a body of men who claim for
+themselves that they are in complete and sole possession of the
+truth.  And these bodies, having in course of time, aided by the
+support of the temporal authorities, developed into powerful
+institutions, have been the principal obstacles to the diffusion
+of a true comprehension of the teaching of Christ.
+
+It could not be otherwise.  The chief peculiarity which
+distinguished Christ's teaching from previous religions consisted
+in the fact that those who accepted it strove ever more and more
+to comprehend and realize its teaching.  But the Church doctrine
+asserted its own complete and final comprehension and realization
+of it.
+
+Strange though it may seem to us who have been brought up in the
+erroneous view of the Church as a Christian institution, and in
+contempt for heresy, yet the fact is that only in what was called
+heresy was there any true movement, that is, true Christianity,
+and that it only ceased to be so when those heresies stopped short
+in their movement and also petrified into the fixed forms of a
+church.
+
+And, indeed what is a heresy?  Read all the theological works one
+after another.  In all of them heresy is the subject which first
+presents itself for definition; since every theological work deals
+with the true doctrine of Christ as distinguished from the
+erroneous doctrines which surround it, that is, heresies.  Yet you
+will not find anywhere anything like a definition of heresy.
+
+The treatment of this subject by the learned historian of
+Christianity, E. de Pressensé, in his "Histoire du Dogme" (Paris,
+1869), under the heading "Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia," may serve
+as an illustration of the complete absence of anything like a
+definition of what is understood by the word heresy. Here is what
+he says in his introduction (p. 3):
+
+   "Je sais  que l'on nous conteste le droit de qualifier ainsi
+   [that is, to call heresies] les tendances qui furent si
+   vivement combattues par les premiers Pères.  La désignation
+   même d'hérésie semble une atteinte portée à la liberté de
+   conscience et de pensée.  Nous ne pouvons partager ce scrupule,
+   car il n'irait à rien moins qu'à enlever au Christianisme tout
+   caractère distinctif." [see Footnote]
+
+    [Footnote: "I know that our right to qualify thus the
+    tendencies which were so actively opposed by the early
+    Fathers is contested.  The very use of the word heresy
+    seems an attack upon liberty of conscience and thought.
+    We cannot share this scruple; for it would amount to
+    nothing less than depriving Christianity of all
+    distinctive character."]
+
+And though he tells us that after Constantine's time the Church
+did actually abuse its power by designating those who dissented
+from it as heretics and persecuting them, yet he says, when
+speaking of early times:
+
+   "L'église est une libre association; il y a tout profit a se
+   séparer d'elle.  La polémique contre l'erreur n'a d'autres
+   ressources que la pensée et le sentiment. Un type doctrinal
+   uniforme n'a pas encore été élaboré; les divergences
+   secondaires se produisent en Orient et en Occident avec une
+   entière liberté; la théologie n'est point liée a d'invariables
+   formules.  Si au sein de cette diversité apparait un fonds
+   commun de croyances, n'est-on pas en droit d'y voir non pas un
+   système formulé et composé par les représentants d'une
+   autorité d'école, mais la foi elle-même dons son instinct le
+   plus sûr et sa manifestation la plus spontanée?  Si cette même
+   unanimité qui se révèle dans les croyances essentielles, se
+   retrouve pour repousser telles ou telles tendances ne serons
+   nous pas en droit de conclure que ces tendances étaient en
+   désacord flagrant avec les principes fondamentaux du
+   christianisme?  Cette présomption ne se transformerait-elle
+   pas en certitude si nous reconnaissons dans la doctrine
+   universellement repoussée par l'Église les traits
+   caractéristiques de l'une des religions du passé?  Pour dire
+   que le gnosticisme ou l'ébionitisme sont les formes légitimes
+   de la pensée chrétienne il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas
+   de pensée chrétienne, ni de caractère spécifique qui la fasse
+   reconnaître.  Sous prétexte de l'élargir, on la dissout.
+   Personne au temps de Platon n'eût osé couvrir de son nom une
+   doctrine qui n'eut pas fait place à la théorie des idées; et
+   l'on eût excité les justes moqueries de la Grèce, en voulant
+   faire d'Epicure ou de Zénon un disciple de l'Académie.
+   Reconnaissons donc que s'il existe une religion ou une
+   doctrine qui s'appelle christianisme, elle peut avoir ses
+   hérésies." [see Footnote]
+
+    [Footnote: "The Church is a free association; there is much to
+    be gained by separation from it.  Conflict with error has no
+    weapons other than thought and feeling.  One uniform type of
+    doctrine has not yet been elaborated; divergencies in
+    secondary matters arise freely in East and West; theology is
+    not wedded to invariable formulas.  If in the midst of this
+    diversity a mass of beliefs common to all is apparent, is one
+    not justified in seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed
+    by the representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself
+    in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation?
+    If the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of
+    belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we
+    not justified in concluding that these tendencies were in
+    flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of
+    Christianity?  And will not this presumption be transformed
+    into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally
+    rejected by the Church the characteristic features of one of
+    the religions of the past?  To say that gnosticism or
+    ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must
+    boldly deny the existence of Christian thought at all, or any
+    specific character by which it could be recognized.  While
+    ostensibly widening its realm, one undermines it.  No one in
+    the time of Plato would have ventured to give his name to a
+    doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no place, and one
+    would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying
+    to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy.
+    Let us recognize, then, that if a religion or a doctrine
+    exists which is called Christianity, it may have its
+    heresies."]
+
+The author's whole argument amounts to this: that every opinion
+which differs from the code of dogmas we believe in at a given
+time, is heresy.  But of course at any given time and place men
+always believe in something or other; and this belief in
+something, indefinite at any place, at some time, cannot be a
+criterion of truth.
+
+It all amounts to this: since ubi Christus ibi Ecclesia, then
+Christus is where we are.
+
+Every so-called heresy, regarding, as it does, its own creed as
+the truth, can just as easily find in Church history a series of
+illustrations of its own creed, can use all Pressensé's arguments
+on its own behalf, and can call its own creed the one truly
+Christian creed.  And that is just what all heresies do and have
+always done.
+
+The only definition of heresy (the word [GREEK WORD], means a
+part) is this: the name given by a body of men to any opinion
+which rejects a part of the Creed professed by that body.  The
+more frequent meaning, more often ascribed to the word heresy, is
+--that of an opinion which rejects the Church doctrine founded and
+supported by the temporal authorities.
+
+    [TRANSCRIBIST'S NOTE: The GREEK WORD above used Greek letters,
+    spelled: alpha(followed by an apostrophe)-iota(with accent)-
+    rho-epsilon-sigma-iota-zeta]
+
+There is a remarkable and voluminous work, very little known,
+"Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie," 1729, by Gottfried
+Arnold, which deals with precisely this subject, and points out
+all the unlawfulness, the arbitrariness, the senselessness, and
+the cruelty of using the word heretic in the sense of reprobate.
+This book is an attempt to write the history of Christianity in
+the form of a history of heresy.
+
+In the introduction the author propounds a series of questions:
+(1) Of those who make heretics; (2) Of those whom they made
+heretics; (3) Of heretical subjects themselves; (4) Of the method
+of making heretics; and (5) Of the object and result of making
+heretics.
+
+On each of these points he propounds ten more questions, the
+answers to which he gives later on from the works of well-known
+theologians.  But he leaves the reader to draw for himself the
+principal conclusion from the expositions in the whole book.  As
+examples of these questions, in which the answers are to some
+extent included also, I will quote the following. Under the 4th
+head, of the manner in which heretics are made, he says, in one of
+the questions (in the 7th):
+
+   "Does not all history show that the greatest makers of
+   heretics and masters of that craft were just these wise men,
+   from whom the Father hid his secrets, that is, the hypocrites,
+   the Pharisees, and lawyers, men utterly godless and perverted
+   (Question 20-21)?  And in the corrupt times of Christianity
+   were not these very men cast out, denounced by the hypocrites
+   and envious, who were endowed by God with great gifts and who
+   would in the days of pure Christianity have been held in high
+   honor?  And, on the other hand, would not the men who, in the
+   decline of Christianity raised themselves above all, and
+   regarded themselves as the teachers of the purest Christianity,
+   would not these very men, in the times of the apostles and
+   disciples of Christ, have been regarded as the most shameless
+   heretics and anti-Christians?"
+
+He expounds, among other things in these questions, the theory
+that any verbal expression of faith, such as was demanded by the
+Church, and the departure from which was reckoned as heresy, could
+never fully cover the exact religious ideas of a believer, and
+that therefore the demand for an expression of faith in certain
+words was ever productive of heresy, and he says, in Question 21:
+
+   "And if heavenly things and thoughts present themselves to a
+   man's mind as so great and so profound that he does not find
+   corresponding words to express them, ought one to call him a
+   heretic, because he cannot express his idea with perfect
+   exactness?"
+
+And in Question 33:
+
+   "And is not the fact that there was no heresy in the earliest
+   days due to the fact that the Christians did not judge one
+   another by verbal expressions, but by deed and by heart, since
+   they had perfect liberty to express their ideas without the
+   dread of being called heretics; was it not the easiest and most
+   ordinary ecclesiastical proceeding, if the clergy wanted to get
+   rid of or to ruin anyone, for them to cast suspicion on the
+   person's belief, and to throw a cloak of heresy upon him, and
+   by this means to procure his condemnation and removal?
+
+   "True though it may be that there were sins and errors among
+   the so-called heretics, it is no less true and evident," he
+   says farther on, "from the innumerable examples quoted here
+   (i. e., in the history of the Church and of heresy), that there
+   was not a single sincere and conscientious man of any
+   importance whom the Churchmen would not from envy or other
+   causes have ruined."
+
+Thus, almost two hundred years ago, the real meaning of heresy was
+understood.  And notwithstanding that, the same conception of it
+has gone on existing up to now.  And it cannot fail to exist so
+long as the conception of a church exists.  Heresy is the obverse
+side of the Church.  Wherever there is a church, there must be the
+conception of heresy.  A church is a body of men who assert that
+they are in possession of infallible truth.  Heresy is the opinion
+of the men who do not admit the infallibility of the Church's
+truth.
+
+Heresy makes its appearance in the Church.  It is the effort to
+break through the petrified authority of the Church.  All effort
+after a living comprehension of the doctrine has been made by
+heretics.  Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, Luther, Huss,
+Savonarola, Helchitsky, and the rest were heretics.  It could not
+be otherwise.
+
+The follower of Christ, whose service means an ever-growing
+understanding of his teaching, and an ever-closer fulfillment of
+it, in progress toward perfection, cannot, just because he is a
+follower, of Christ, claim for himself or any other that he
+understands Christ's teaching fully and fulfills it.  Still less
+can he claim this for any body of men.
+
+To whatever degree of understanding and perfection the follower of
+Christ may have attained, he always feels the insufficiency of his
+understanding and fulfillment of it, and is always striving toward
+a fuller understanding and fulfillment.  And therefore, to assert
+of one's self or of any body of men, that one is or they are in
+possession of perfect understanding and fulfillment of Christ's
+word, is to renounce the very spirit of Christ's teaching.
+
+Strange as it may seem, the churches as churches have always been,
+and cannot but be, institutions not only alien in spirit to
+Christ's teaching, but even directly antagonistic to it.  With
+good reason Voltaire calls the Church l'infâme; with good reason
+have all or almost all so-called sects of Christians recognized
+the Church as the scarlet woman foretold in the Apocalypse; with
+good reason is the history of the Church the history of the
+greatest cruelties and horrors.
+
+The churches as churches are not, as many people suppose,
+institutions which have Christian principles for their basis, even
+though they may have strayed a little away from the straight path.
+The churches as churches, as bodies which assert their own
+infallibility, are institutions opposed to Christianity.  There is
+not only nothing in common between the churches as such and
+Christianity, except the name, but they represent two principles
+fundamentally opposed and antagonistic to one another.  One
+represents pride, violence, self-assertion, stagnation, and death;
+the other, meekness, penitence, humility, progress, and life.
+
+We cannot serve these two masters; we have to choose between
+them.
+
+The servants of the churches of all denominations, especially of
+later times, try to show themselves champions of progress in
+Christianity.  They make concessions, wish to correct the abuses
+that have slipped into the Church, and maintain that one cannot,
+on account of these abuses, deny the principle itself of a
+Christian church, which alone can bind all men together in unity
+and be a mediator between men and God.  But this is all a mistake.
+Not only have churches never bound men together in unity; they
+have always been one of the principal causes of division between
+men, of their hatred of one another, of wars, battles,
+inquisitions, massacres of St. Bartholomew, and so on.  And the
+churches have never served as mediators between men and God.  Such
+mediation is not wanted, and was directly forbidden by Christ, who
+has revealed his teaching directly and immediately to each man.
+But the churches set up dead forms in the place of God, and far
+from revealing God, they obscure him from men's sight.  The
+churches, which originated from misunderstanding of Christ's
+teaching and have maintained this misunderstanding by their
+immovability, cannot but persecute and refuse to recognize all
+true understanding of Christ's words.  They try to conceal this,
+but in vain; for every step forward along the path pointed out for
+us by Christ is a step toward their destruction.
+
+To hear and to read the sermons and articles in which Church writers of
+later times of all denominations speak of Christian truths and virtues;
+to hear or read these skillful arguments that have been elaborated
+during centuries, and exhortations and professions, which sometimes seem
+like sincere professions, one is ready to doubt whether the churches can
+be antagonistic to Christianity. "It cannot be," one says, "that these
+people who can point to such men as Chrysostom, Fénelon, Butler, and
+others professing the Christian faith, were antagonistic to
+Christianity." One is tempted to say, "The churches may have strayed
+away from Christianity, they may be in error, but they cannot be hostile
+to it." But we must look to the fruit to judge the tree, as Christ
+taught us. And if we see that their fruits were evil, that the results
+of their activity were antagonistic to Christianity, we cannot but admit
+that however good the men were--the work of the Church in which these
+men took part was not Christian. The goodness and worth of these men who
+served the churches was the goodness and worth of the men, and not of
+the institution they served. All the good men, such as Francis of
+Assisi, and Francis of Sales, our Tihon Zadonsky, Thomas à Kempis, and
+others, were good men in spite of their serving an institution hostile
+to Christianity, and they would have been still better if they had not
+been under the influence of the error which they were serving.
+
+But why should we speak of the past and judge from the past, which
+may have been misrepresented and misunderstood by us?  The
+churches, with their principles and their practice, are not a
+thing of the past.  The churches are before us to-day, and we can
+judge of them to some purpose by their practical activity, their
+influence on men.
+
+What is the practical work of the churches to-day?  What is their
+influence upon men?  What is done by the churches among us, among
+the Catholics and the Protestants of all denominations--what is
+their practical work? and what are the results of their practical
+work?
+
+The practice of our Russian so-called Orthodox Church is plain to
+all.  It is an enormous fact which there is no possibility of
+hiding and about which there can be no disputing.
+
+What constitutes the practical work of this Russian Church, this
+immense, intensely active institution, which consists of a
+regiment of half a million men and costs the people tens of
+millions of rubles?
+
+The practical business of the Church consists in instilling by
+every conceivable means into the mass of one hundred millions of
+the Russian people those extinct relics of beliefs for which there
+is nowadays no kind of justification, "in which scarcely anyone
+now believes, and often not even those whose duty it is to diffuse
+these false beliefs."  To instill into the people the formulas of
+Byzantine theology, of the Trinity, of the Mother of God, of
+Sacraments, of Grace, and so on, extinct conceptions, foreign to
+us, and having no kind of meaning for men of our times,
+forms only one part of the work of the Russian Church.  Another
+part of its practice consists in the maintenance of idol-worship
+in the most literal meaning of the word; in the veneration of holy
+relics, and of ikons, the offering of sacrifices to them, and the
+expectation of their answers to prayer.  I am not going to speak
+of what is preached and what is written by clergy of scientific or
+liberal tendencies in the theological journals.  I am going to
+speak of what is actually done by the clergy through the wide
+expanse of the Russian land among a people of one hundred
+millions.  What do they, diligently, assiduously, everywhere
+alike, without intermission, teach the people?  What do they
+demand from the people in virtue of their (so-called) Christian
+faith?
+
+I will begin from the beginning with the birth of a child.  At the
+birth of a child they teach them that they must recite a prayer
+over the child and mother to purify them, as though without this
+prayer the mother of a newborn child were unclean.  To do this the
+priest holds the child in his arms before the images of the saints
+(called by the people plainly gods) and reads words of exorcizing
+power, and this purifies the mother.  Then it is suggested to the
+parents, and even exacted of them, under fear of punishment for
+non-fulfillment, that the child must be baptized; that is, be
+dipped by the priest three times into the water, while certain
+words, understood by no one, are read aloud, and certain actions,
+still less understood, are performed; various parts of the body
+are rubbed with oil, and the hair is cut, while the sponsors blow
+and spit at an imaginary devil.  All this is necessary to purify
+the child and to make him a Christian.  Then it is instilled into
+the parents that they ought to administer the sacrament to the
+child, that is, give him, in the guise of bread and wine, a
+portion of Christ's body to eat, as a result of which the child
+receives the grace of God within it, and so on.  Then it is
+suggested that the child as it grows up must be taught to pray.
+To pray means to place himself directly before the wooden boards
+on which are painted the faces of Christ, the Mother of God, and
+the saints, to bow his head and his whole body, and to touch his
+forehead, his shoulders and his stomach with his right hand,
+holding his fingers in a certain position, and to utter some words
+of Slavonic, the most usual of which as taught to all children
+are: Mother of God, virgin, rejoice thee, etc., etc.
+
+Then it is instilled into the child as it is brought up that at
+the sight of any church or ikon he must repeat the same action--i. e.,
+cross himself.  Then it is instilled into him that on holidays
+(holidays are the days on which Christ was born, though no one
+knows when that was, on which he was circumcised, on which the
+Mother of God died, on which the cross was carried in procession,
+on which ikons have been set up, on which a lunatic saw a vision,
+and so on)--on holidays he must dress himself in his best clothes
+and go to church, and must buy candles and place them there before
+the images of the saints.  Then he must give offerings and prayers
+for the dead, and little loaves to be cut up into three-cornered
+pieces, and must pray many times for the health and prosperity of
+the Tzar and the bishops, and for himself and his own affairs, and
+then kiss the cross and the hand of the priest.
+Besides these observances, it is instilled into him that at
+least once a year he must confess.  To confess means to go to the
+church and to tell the priest his sins, on the theory that this
+informing a stranger of his sins completely purifies him from
+them.  And after that he must eat with a little spoon a morsel of
+bread with wine, which will purify him still more.  Next it is
+instilled into him that if a man and woman want their physical
+union to be sanctified they must go to church, put on metal
+crowns, drink certain potions, walk three times round a table to
+the sound of singing, and that then the physical union of a man
+and woman becomes sacred and altogether different from all other
+such unions.
+
+Further it is instilled into him in his life that he must observe
+the following rules: not to eat butter or milk on certain days,
+and on certain other days to sing Te Deums and requiems for the
+dead, on holidays to entertain the priest and give him money, and
+several times in the year to bring the ikons from the church, and
+to carry them slung on his shoulders through the fields and
+houses.  It is instilled into him that on his death-bed a man must
+not fail to eat bread and wine with a spoon, and that it will be
+still better if he has time to be rubbed with sacred oil.  This
+will guarantee his welfare in the future life.  After his death it
+is instilled into his relatives that it is a good thing for the
+salvation of the dead man to place a printed paper of prayers in
+his hands; it is a good thing further to read aloud a certain book
+over the dead body, and to pronounce the dead man's name in church
+at a certain time.  All this is regarded as faith obligatory on
+everyone.
+
+But if anyone wants to take particular care of his soul, then
+according to this faith he is instructed that the greatest
+security of the salvation of the soul in the world is attained by
+offering money to the churches and monasteries, and engaging the
+holy men by this means to pray for him. Entering monasteries too
+and kissing relics and miraculous ikons, are further means of
+salvation for the soul.
+
+According to this faith ikons and relics communicate a special
+sanctity, power, and grace, and even proximity to these objects,
+touching them, kissing them, putting candles before them, crawling
+under them while they are being carried along, are all efficacious
+for salvation, as well as Te Deums repeated before these holy
+things.
+
+So this, and nothing else, is the faith called Orthodox, that is
+the actual faith which, under the guise of Christianity, has been
+with all the forces of the Church, and is now with especial zeal,
+instilled into the people.
+
+And let no one say that the Orthodox teachers place the essential
+part of their teaching in something else, and that all these are
+only ancient forms, which it is not thought necessary to do away
+with.  That is false.  This, and nothing but this, is the faith
+taught through the whole of Russia by the whole of the Russian
+clergy, and of late years with especial zeal.  There is nothing
+else taught.  Something different may be talked of and written of
+in the capitals; but among the hundred millions of the people this
+is what is done, this is what is taught, and nothing more.
+Churchmen may talk of something else, but this is what they teach
+by every means in their power.
+
+All this, and the worship of relics and of ikons, has been
+introduced into works of theology and into the catechisms.  Thus
+they teach it to the people in theory and in practice, using every
+resource of authority, solemnity, pomp, and violence to impress
+them.  They compel the people, by overawing them, to believe in
+this, and jealously guard this faith from any attempt to free the
+people from these barbarous superstitions.
+
+As I said when I published my book, Christ's teaching and his very
+words about non-resistance to evil were for many years a subject
+for ridicule and low jesting in my eyes, and Churchmen, far from
+opposing it, even encouraged this scoffing at sacred things.  But
+try the experiment of saying a disrespectful word about a hideous
+idol which is carried sacrilegiously about Moscow by drunken men
+under the name of the ikon of the Iversky virgin, and you will
+raise a groan of indignation from these same Churchmen.  All that
+they preach is an external observance of the rites of idolatry.
+And let it not be said that the one does not hinder the other,
+that "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other
+undone."  "All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that
+observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and
+do not" (Matt. xxiii. 23, 3).
+
+This was spoken of the Pharisees, who fulfilled all the external
+observances prescribed by the law, and therefore the words
+"whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do," refer to
+works of mercy and goodness, and the words "do not ye after their
+works, for they say and do not," refer to their observance of
+ceremonies and their neglect of good works, and have exactly the
+opposite meaning to that which the Churchmen try to give to the
+passage, interpreting it as an injunction to observe ceremonies.
+External observances and the service of truth and goodness are for
+the most part difficult to combine; the one excludes the other.
+So it was with the Pharisees, so it is now with Church Christians.
+
+If a man can be saved by the redemption, by sacraments, and by
+prayer, then he does not need good works.
+
+The Sermon on the Mount, or the Creed. One cannot believe in both. And
+Churchmen have chosen the latter. The Creed is taught and is read as a
+prayer in the churches, but the Sermon on the Mount is excluded even
+from the Gospel passages read in the churches, so that the congregation
+never hears it in church, except on those days when the whole of the
+Gospel is read. Indeed, it could not be otherwise. People who believe in
+a wicked and senseless God--who has cursed the human race and devoted
+his own Son to sacrifice, and a part of mankind to eternal
+torment--cannot believe in the God of love. The man who believes in a
+God, in a Christ coming again in glory to judge and to punish the quick
+and the dead, cannot believe in the Christ who bade us turn the left
+cheek, judge not, forgive these that wrong us, and love our enemies. The
+man who believes in the inspiration of the Old Testament and the sacred
+character of David, who commanded on his deathbed the murder of an old
+man who had cursed him, and whom he could not kill himself because he
+was bound by an oath to him, and the similar atrocities of which the Old
+Testament is full, cannot believe in the holy love of Christ. The man
+who believes in the Church's doctrine of the compatibility of warfare
+and capital punishment with Christianity cannot believe in the
+brotherhood of all men.
+
+And what is most important of all--the man who believes in
+salvation through faith in the redemption or the sacraments,
+cannot devote all his powers to realizing Christ's moral teaching
+in his life.
+
+The man who has been instructed by the Church in the profane
+doctrine that a man cannot be saved by his own powers, but that
+there is another means of salvation, will infallibly rely upon
+this means and not on his own powers, which, they assure him, it
+is sinful to trust in.
+
+The teaching of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments,
+excludes the teaching of Christ; most of all the teaching of the
+Orthodox Church with its idolatrous observances.
+
+"But the people have always believed of their own accord as they
+believe now," will be said in answer to this.  "The whole history
+of the Russian people proves it.  One cannot deprive the people of
+their traditions."  This statement, too, is misleading.  The
+people did certainly at one time believe in something like what
+the Church believes in now, though it was far from being the same
+thing.  In spite of their superstitious regard for ikons,
+housespirits, relics, and festivals with wreaths of birch leaves,
+there has still always been in the people a profound moral and
+living understanding of Christianity, which there has never been
+in the Church as a whole, and which is only met with in its best
+representatives.  But the people, notwithstanding all the
+prejudices instilled into them by the government and the Church,
+have in their best representatives long outgrown that crude stage
+of understanding, a fact which is proved by the springing up
+everywhere of the rationalist sects with which Russia is swarming
+to-day, and on which Churchmen are now carrying on an ineffectual
+warfare.  The people are advancing to a consciousness of the
+moral, living side of Christianity.  And then the Church
+comes forward, not borrowing from the people, but zealously
+instilling into them the petrified formalities of an extinct
+paganism, and striving to thrust them back again into the
+darkness from which they are emerging with such effort.
+
+"We teach the people nothing new, nothing but what they believe,
+only in a more perfect form," say the Churchmen.  This is just
+what the man did who tied up the full-grown chicken and thrust it
+back into the shell it had come out of.
+
+I have often been irritated, though it would be comic if the
+consequences were not so awful, by observing how men shut one
+another in a delusion and cannot get out of this magic circle.
+
+The first question, the first doubt of a Russian who is beginning
+to think, is a question about the ikons, and still more the
+miraculous relics: Is it true that they are genuine, and that
+miracles are worked through them?  Hundreds of thousands of men
+put this question to themselves, and their principal difficulty in
+answering it is the fact that bishops, metropolitans, and all men
+in positions of authority kiss the relics and wonder-working
+ikons.  Ask the bishops and men in positions of authority why they
+do so, and they will say they do it for the sake of the people,
+while the people kiss them because the bishops and men in
+authority do so.
+
+In spite of all the external varnish of modernity, learning, and
+spirituality which the members of the Church begin nowadays to
+assume in their works, their articles, their theological journals,
+and their sermons, the practical work of the Russian Church
+consists of nothing more than keeping the people in their present
+condition of coarse and savage idolatry, and worse still,
+strengthening and diffusing superstition and religious ignorance,
+and suppressing that living understanding of Christianity which
+exists in the people side by side with idolatry.
+
+I remember once being present in the monks' bookshop of the Optchy
+Hermitage while an old peasant was choosing books for his
+grandson, who could read.  A monk pressed on him accounts of
+relics, holidays, miraculous ikons, a psalter, etc.  I asked the
+old man, "Has he the Gospel?"  "No."  "Give him the Gospel in
+Russian," I said to the monk.  "That will not do for him,"
+answered the monk.  There you have an epitome of the work of our
+Church.
+
+But this is only in barbarous Russia, the European and American
+reader will observe.  And such an observation is just, but only so
+far as it refers to the government, which aids the Church in its
+task of stultification and corruption in Russia.
+
+It is true that there is nowhere in Europe a government so
+despotic and so closely allied with the ruling Church.  And
+therefore the share of the temporal power in the corruption of the
+people is greatest in Russia.  But it is untrue that the Russian
+Church in its influence on the people is in any respect different
+from any other church.
+
+The churches are everywhere the same, and if the Catholic, the
+Anglican, or the Lutheran Church has not at hand a government as
+compliant as the Russian, it is not due to any indisposition to
+profit by such a government.
+
+The Church as a church, whatever it may be--Catholic, Anglican,
+Lutheran, Presbyterian--every church, in so far as it is a church,
+cannot but strive for the same object as the Russian Church.
+That object is to conceal the real meaning of Christ's teaching
+and to replace it by their own, which lays no obligation on them,
+excludes the possibility of understanding the true teaching of
+Christ, and what is the chief consideration, justifies the
+existence of priests supported at the people's expense.
+
+What else has Catholicism done, what else is it doing in its
+prohibition of reading the Gospel, and in its demand for
+unreasoning submission to Church authorities and to an infallible
+Pope?  Is the religion of Catholicism any other than that of the
+Russian Church?  There is the same external ritual, the same
+relics, miracles, and wonder-working images of Notre Dame, and the
+same processions; the same loftily vague discussions of
+Christianity in books and sermons, and when it comes to practice,
+the same supporting of the present idolatry.  And is not the same
+thing done in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and every denomination of
+Protestantism which has been formed into a church?  There is the
+same duty laid on their congregations to believe in the dogmas
+expressed in the fourth century, which have lost all meaning for
+men of our times, and the same duty of idolatrous worship, if not
+of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the letter of the
+Bible.  There is always the same activity directed to concealing
+the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their place an
+external respectability and cant, as it is so well described by
+the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it.  In Protestantism
+this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the
+excuse of antiquity.  And does not exactly the same thing show
+itself even in contemporary revivalism--the revived Calvinism and
+Evangelicalism, to which the Salvation Army owes its origin?
+
+Uniform is the attitude of all the churches to the teaching of
+Christ, whose name they assume for their own advantage.
+
+The inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the
+teaching of Christ is, of course, the reason why special efforts
+are necessary to conceal this inconsistency from people.  Truly,
+we need only imagine ourselves in the position of any grown-up
+man, not necessarily educated, even the simplest man of the
+present day, who has picked up the ideas that are everywhere in
+the air nowadays of geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography, or
+history, when he, for the first time, consciously compares them
+with the articles of belief instilled into him in childhood, and
+maintained by the churches--that God created the world in six
+days, and light before the sun; that Noah shut up all the animals
+in his ark, and so on; that Jesus is also God the Son, who created
+all before time was; that this God came down upon earth to atone
+for Adam's sin; that he rose again, ascended into heaven, and
+sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and will come in the
+clouds to judge the world, and so on.  All these propositions,
+elaborated by men of the fourth century, had a certain meaning for
+men of that time, but for men of to-day they have no meaning
+whatever.  Men of the present day can repeat these words with
+their lips, but believe them they cannot.  For such sentences as
+that God lives in heaven, that the heavens opened and a voice from
+somewhere said something, that Christ rose again, and ascended
+somewhere in heaven, and again will come from somewhere on the
+clouds, and so on, have no meaning for us.
+
+A man who regarded the heavens as a solid, finite vault could
+believe or disbelieve that God created the heavens, that the
+heavens opened, that Christ ascended into heaven, but for us all
+these phrases have no sense whatever.  Men of the present can only
+believe, as indeed they do, that they ought to believe in this;
+but believe it they cannot, because it has no meaning for them.
+
+Even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative
+sense and are allegories, we know that in the first place all
+Churchmen are not agreed about it, but, on the contrary, the
+majority stick to understanding the Holy Scripture in its literal
+sense; and secondly, that these allegorical interpretations are
+very varied and are not supported by any evidence.
+
+But even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the
+doctrines of the Church just as they are taught to him, the
+universal diffusion of education and of the Gospel and of
+communication between people of different forms of religion
+presents a still more insurmountable obstacle to his doing so.
+
+A man of the present day need only buy a Gospel for three copecks and
+read through the plain words, admitting of no misinterpretation, that
+Christ said to the Samaritan woman "that the Father seeketh not
+worshipers at Jerusalem, nor in this mountain nor in that, but
+worshipers in spirit and in truth," or the saying that "the Christian
+must not pray like the heathen, nor for show, but secretly, that is, in
+his closet," or that Christ's follower must call no man master or
+father--he need only read these words to be thoroughly convinced that
+the Church pastors, who call themselves teachers in opposition to
+Christ's precept, and dispute among themselves, constitute no kind of
+authority, and that what the Churchmen teach us is not Christianity.
+Less even than that is necessary. Even if a man nowadays did continue to
+believe in miracles and did not read the Gospel, mere association with
+people of different forms of religion and faith, which happens so easily
+in these days, compels him to doubt of the truth of his own faith. It
+was all very well when a man did not see men of any other form of
+religion than his own; he believed that his form of religion was the one
+true one. But a thinking man has only to come into contact--as
+constantly happens in these days--with people, equally good and bad, of
+different denominations, who condemn each other's beliefs, to doubt of
+the truth of the belief he professes himself. In these days only a man
+who is absolutely ignorant or absolutely indifferent to the vital
+questions with which religion deals, can remain in the faith of the
+Church.
+
+What deceptions and what strenuous efforts the churches must
+employ to continue, in spite of all these tendencies subversive of
+the faith, to build churches, to perform masses, to preach, to
+teach, to convert, and, most of all, to receive for it all immense
+emoluments, as do all these priests, pastors, incumbents,
+superintendents, abbots, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops.
+They need special supernatural efforts.  And the churches do, with
+ever-increasing intensity and zeal, make such efforts.  With us in
+Russia, besides other means, they employ, simple brute force, as
+there the temporal power is willing to obey the Church.  Men who
+refuse an external assent to the faith, and say so openly, are
+either directly punished or deprived of their rights; men who
+strictly keep the external forms of religion are rewarded and
+given privileges.
+
+That is how the Orthodox clergy proceed; but indeed all churches
+without exception avail themselves of every means for the purpose
+--one of the most important of which is what is now called
+hypnotism.
+
+Every art, from architecture to poetry, is brought into
+requisition to work its effect on men's souls and to reduce them
+to a state of stupefaction, and this effect is constantly
+produced.  This use of hypnotizing influence on men to bring them
+to a state of stupefaction is especially apparent in the
+proceedings of the Salvation Army, who employ new practices to
+which we are unaccustomed: trumpets, drums, songs, flags,
+costumes, marching, dancing, tears, and dramatic performances.
+
+But this only displeases us because these are new practices.  Were
+not the old practices in churches essentially the same, with their
+special lighting, gold, splendor, candles, choirs, organ, bells,
+vestments, intoning, etc.?
+
+But however powerful this hypnotic influence may be, it is not the
+chief nor the most pernicious activity of the
+Church.  The chief and most pernicious work of the Church is that
+which is directed to the deception of children--these very
+children of whom Christ said: "Woe to him that offendeth one of
+these little ones."  From the very first awakening of the
+consciousness of the child they begin to deceive him, to instill
+into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not themselves
+believe in, and they continue to instill it into him till the
+deception has by habit grown into the child's nature.  They
+studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in
+life, and when the deception has so grown into his life that it
+would be difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole
+world of science and reality, which cannot by any means be
+reconciled with the beliefs that have been instilled into him,
+leaving it to him to find his way as best he can out of these
+contradictions.
+
+If one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he
+could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of
+two opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him
+from childhood, one could not invent any means more effectual than
+the treatment of every young man educated in our so-called
+Christian society.
+
+It is terrible to think what the churches do to men. But
+if one imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute
+the Church, we see they could not act differently.  The churches
+are placed in a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene
+Creed--the one excludes the other.  If a man sincerely believes in
+the Sermon on the Mount, the Nicene Creed must inevitably lose all
+meaning and significance for him, and the Church and its
+representatives together with it.  If a man believes in the Nicene
+Creed, that is, in the Church, that is, in those who call
+themselves its representatives, the Sermon on the Mount becomes
+superfluous for him.  And therefore the churches cannot but make
+every possible effort to obscure the meaning of the Sermon on the
+Mount, and to attract men to themselves.  It is only due to the
+intense zeal of the churches in this direction that the influence
+of the churches has lasted hitherto.
+
+Let the Church stop its work of hypnotizing the masses, and
+deceiving children even for the briefest interval of time, and men
+would begin to understand Christ's teaching.  But this
+understanding will be the end of the churches and all their
+influence.  And therefore the churches will not for an instant
+relax their zeal in the business of hypnotizing grown-up people
+and deceiving children.  This, then, is the work of the churches:
+to instill a false interpretation of Christ's teaching into men,
+and to prevent a true interpretation of it for the majority of
+so-called believers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY MEN OF SCIENCE.
+
+Attitude of Men of Science to Religions in General--What Religion is,
+and What is its Significance for the Life of Humanity--Three Conceptions
+of Life--Christian Religion the Expression of the Divine Conception of
+Life--Misinterpretation of Christianity by Men of Science, who Study it
+in its External Manifestations Due to their Criticising it from
+Standpoint of Social Conception of Life--Opinion, Resulting from this
+Misinterpretation, that Christ's Moral Teaching is Exaggerated and
+Cannot be put into Practice--Expression of Divine Conception of Life in
+the Gospel--False Ideas of Men of Science on Christianity Proceed from
+their Conviction that they have an Infallible Method of Criticism--From
+which come Two Misconceptions in Regard to Christian Doctrine--First
+Misconception, that the Teaching Cannot be put into Practice, Due to the
+Christian Religion Directing Life in a Way Different from that of the
+Social Theory of Life--Christianity holds up Ideal, does not lay down
+Rules--To the Animal Force of Man Christ Adds the Consciousness of a
+Divine Force--Christianity Seems to Destroy Possibility of Life only
+when the Ideal held up is Mistaken for Rule--Ideal Must Not be
+Lowered--Life, According to Christ's Teaching, is Movement--The Ideal
+and the Precepts--Second Misconception Shown in Replacing Love and
+Service of God by Love and Service of Humanity--Men of Science Imagine
+their Doctrine of Service of Humanity and Christianity are
+Identical--Doctrine of Service of Humanity Based on Social Conception of
+Life--Love for Humanity, Logically Deduced from Love of Self, has No
+Meaning because Humanity is a Fiction--Christian Love Deduced from Love
+of God, Finds its Object in the whole World, not in Humanity
+Alone--Christianity Teaches Man to Live in Accordance with his Divine
+Nature--It Shows that the Essence of the Soul of Man is Love, and that
+his Happiness Ensues from Love of God, whom he Recognizes as Love within
+himself.
+
+
+Now I will speak of the other view of Christianity which hinders
+the true understanding of it--the scientific view.
+
+Churchmen substitute for Christianity the version they have framed
+of it for themselves, and this view of Christianity they regard as
+the one infallibly true one.
+
+Men of science regard as Christianity only the tenets held by the
+different churches in the past and present; and finding that these
+tenets have lost all the significance of Christianity, they accept
+it as a religion which has outlived its age.
+
+To see clearly how impossible it is to understand the Christian
+teaching from such a point of view, one must form for oneself an
+idea of the place actually held by religions in general, by the
+Christian religion in particular, in the life of mankind, and of
+the significance attributed to them by science.
+
+Just as the individual man cannot live without having some theory
+of the meaning of his life, and is always, though often
+unconsciously, framing his conduct in accordance with the meaning
+he attributes to his life, so too associations of men living in
+similar conditions--nations--cannot but have theories of the
+meaning of their associated life and conduct ensuing from those
+theories.  And as the individual man, when he attains a fresh
+stage of growth, inevitably changes his philosophy of life, and
+the grown-up man sees a different meaning in it from the child, so
+too associations of men--nations--are bound to change their
+philosophy of life and the conduct ensuing from their philosophy,
+to correspond with their development.
+
+The difference, as regards this, between the individual man and
+humanity as a whole, lies in the fact that the individual, in
+forming the view of life proper to the new period of life on which
+he is entering and the conduct resulting from it, benefits by the
+experience of men who have lived before him, who have already
+passed through the stage of growth upon which he is entering.  But
+humanity cannot have this aid, because it is always moving along a
+hitherto untrodden track, and has no one to ask how to understand
+life, and to act in the conditions on which it is entering and
+through which no one has ever passed before.
+
+Nevertheless, just as a man with wife and children cannot continue
+to look at life as he looked at it when he was a child, so too in
+the face of the various changes that are taking place, the greater
+density of population, the establishment of communication between
+different peoples, the improvements of the methods of the struggle
+with nature, and the accumulation of knowledge, humanity cannot
+continue to look at life as of old, and it must frame a new
+theory of life, from which conduct may follow adapted to the new
+conditions on which it has entered and is entering.
+
+To meet this need humanity has the special power of producing men
+who give a new meaning to the whole of human life--a theory of
+life from which follow new forms of activity quite different from
+all preceding them.  The formation of this philosophy of life
+appropriate to humanity in the new conditions on which it is
+entering, and of the practice resulting from it, is what is called
+religion.
+
+And therefore, in the first place, religion is not, as science
+imagines, a manifestation which at one time corresponded with the
+development of humanity, but is afterward outgrown by it.  It is a
+manifestation always inherent in the life of humanity, and is as
+indispensable, as inherent in humanity at the present time as at
+any other.  Secondly, religion is always the theory of the
+practice of the future and not of the past, and therefore it is
+clear that investigation of past manifestations cannot in any case
+grasp the essence of religion.
+
+The essence of every religious teaching lies not in the desire for
+a symbolic expression of the forces of nature, nor in the dread of
+these forces, nor in the craving for the marvelous, nor in the
+external forms in which it is manifested, as men of science
+imagine; the essence of religion lies in the faculty of men of
+foreseeing and pointing out the path of life along which humanity
+must move in the discovery of a new theory of life, as a result of
+which the whole future conduct of humanity is changed and
+different from all that has been before.
+
+This faculty of foreseeing the path along which humanity must
+move, is common in a greater or less degree to all men.  But in
+all times there have been men in whom this faculty was especially
+strong, and these men have given clear and definite expression to
+what all men felt vaguely, and formed a new philosophy of life
+from which new lines of action followed for hundreds and thousands
+of years.
+
+Of such philosophies of life we know three; two have already been
+passed through by humanity, and the third is that we are passing
+through now in Christianity.  These philosophies of life are three
+in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought
+the various theories of life together under these three heads, but
+because all men's actions are always based on one of these three
+views of life--because we cannot view life otherwise than in these
+three ways.
+
+These three views of life are as follows: First, embracing the
+individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the
+society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole
+world, or the divine view of life.
+
+In the first theory of life a man's life is limited to his one
+individuality; the aim of life is the satisfaction of the will of
+this individuality.  In the second theory of life a man's life is
+limited not to his own individuality, but to certain societies and
+classes of individuals: to the tribe, the family, the clan, the
+nation; the aim of life is limited to the satisfaction of the will
+of those associations of individuals.  In the third theory of life
+a man's life is limited not to societies and classes of
+individuals, but extends to the principle and source of life--to
+God.
+
+These three conceptions of life form the foundation of all the
+religious that exist or have existed.
+
+The savage recognizes life only in himself and his personal
+desires. His interest in life is concentrated on himself alone.
+The highest happiness for him is the fullest satisfaction of his
+desires. The motive power of his life is personal enjoyment. His
+religion consists in propitiating his deity and in worshiping his
+gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal
+aims.
+
+The civilized pagan recognizes life not in himself alone, but in
+societies of men--in the tribe, the clan, the family, the kingdom
+--and sacrifices his personal good for these societies.  The
+motive power of his life is glory.  His religion consists in the
+exaltation of the glory of those who are allied to him--the
+founders of his family, his ancestors, his rulers--and in
+worshiping gods who are exclusively protectors of his clan, his
+family, his nation, his government [see Footnote].
+
+    [Footnote: The fact that so many varied forms of
+    existence, as the life of the family, of the tribe,
+    of the clan, of the state, and even the life of
+    humanity theoretically conceived by the Positivists,
+    are founded on this social or pagan theory of life,
+    does not destroy the unity of this theory of life.
+    All these varied forms of life are founded on the
+    same conception, that the life of the individual is
+    not a sufficient aim of life--that the meaning of
+    life can be found only in societies of individuals.]
+
+The man who holds the divine theory of life recognizes life not in
+his own individuality, and not in societies of individualities (in
+the family, the clan, the nation, the tribe, or the government),
+but in the eternal undying source of life--in God; and to fulfill
+the will of God he is ready to sacrifice his individual and family
+and social welfare.  The motor power of his life is love.  And his
+religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the principle of
+the whole--God.
+
+The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the
+gradual transition from the personal, animal conception of life to
+the social conception of life, and from the social conception of
+life to the divine conception of life.  The whole history of the
+ancient peoples, lasting through thousands of years and ending
+with the history of Rome, is the history of the transition from
+the animal, personal view of life to the social view of life.  The
+whole of history from the time of the Roman Empire and the
+appearance of Christianity is the history of the transition,
+through which we are still passing now, from the social view of
+life to the divine view of life.
+
+This view of life is the last, and founded upon it is the
+Christian teaching, which is a guide for the whole of our life and
+lies at the root of all our activity, practical and theoretic.
+Yet men of what is falsely called science, pseudo-scientific men,
+looking at it only in its externals, regard it as something
+outgrown and having no value for us.
+
+Reducing it to its dogmatic side only--to the doctrines of the
+Trinity, the redemption, the miracles, the Church, the sacraments,
+and so on--men of science regard it as only one of an immense
+number of religions which have arisen among mankind, and now, they
+say, having played out its part in history, it is outliving its
+own age and fading away before the light of science and of true
+enlightenment.
+
+We come here upon what, in a large proportion of cases, forms the
+source of the grossest errors of mankind.  Men on a lower level of
+understanding, when brought into contact with phenomena of a
+higher order, instead of making efforts to understand them, to
+raise themselves up to the point of view from which they must look
+at the subject, judge it from their lower standpoint, and the less
+they understand what they are talking about, the more confidently
+and unhesitatingly they pass judgment on it.
+
+To the majority of learned then, looking at the living, moral teaching
+of Christ from the lower standpoint of the conception of life, this
+doctrine appears as nothing but very indefinite and incongruous
+combination of Indian asceticism, Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophy, and
+insubstantial anti-social visions, which have no serious significance
+for our times. Its whole meaning is concentrated for them in its
+external manifestations--in Catholicism, Protestantism, in certain
+dogmas, or in the conflict with the temporal power. Estimating the value
+of Christianity by these phenomena is like a deaf man's judging of the
+character and quality of music by seeing the movements of the musicians.
+
+The result of this is that all these scientific men, from Kant,
+Strauss, Spencer, and Renan down, do not understand the meaning of
+Christ's sayings, do not understand the significance, the object,
+or the reason of their utterance, do not understand even the
+question to which they form the answer.  Yet, without even taking
+the pains to enter into their meaning, they refuse, if unfavorably
+disposed, to recognize any reasonableness in his doctrines; or if
+they want to treat them indulgently, they condescend, from the
+height of their superiority, to correct them, on the supposition
+that Christ meant to express precisely their own ideas, but did
+not succeed in doing so.  They behave to his teaching much as
+self-assertive people talk to those whom they consider beneath
+them, often supplying their companions' words: "Yes, you mean to
+say this and that."  This correction is always with the aim of
+reducing the teaching of the higher, divine conception of life to
+the level of the lower, state conception of life.
+
+They usually say that the moral teaching of Christianity is very
+fine, but overexaggerated; that to make it quite right we must
+reject all in it that is superfluous and unnecessary to our manner
+of life.  "And the doctrine that asks too much, and requires what
+cannot be performed, is worse than that which requires of men what
+is possible and consistent with their powers," these learned
+interpreters of Christianity maintain, repeating what was long ago
+asserted, and could not but be asserted, by those who crucified
+the Teacher because they did not understand him--the Jews.
+
+It seems that in the judgment of the learned men of our
+time the Hebrew law--a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for
+an eye--is a law of just retaliation, known to mankind five
+thousand years before the law of holiness which Christ
+taught in its place.
+
+It seems that all that has been done by those men who understood
+Christ's teaching literally and lived in accordance with such an
+understanding of it, all that has been said and done by all true
+Christians, by all the Christian saints, all that is now reforming
+the world in the shape of socialism and communism--is simply
+exaggeration, not worth talking about.
+
+After eighteen hundred years of education in Christianity the
+civilized world, as represented by its most advanced thinkers,
+holds the conviction that the Christian religion is a religion of
+dogmas; that its teaching in relation to life is unreasonable, and
+is an exaggeration, subversive of the real lawful obligations of
+morality consistent with the nature of man; and that very doctrine
+of retribution which Christ rejected, and in place of which he put
+his teaching, is more practically useful for us.
+
+To learned men the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force is
+exaggerated and even irrational.  Christianity is much better
+without it, they think, not observing closely what Christianity,
+as represented by them, amounts to.
+
+They do not see that to say that the doctrine of non-resistance to
+evil is an exaggeration in Christ's teaching is just like saying
+that the statement of the equality of the radii of a circle is an
+exaggeration in the definition of a circle.  And those who speak
+thus are acting precisely like a man who, having no idea of what a
+circle is, should declare that this requirement, that every point
+of the circumference should be an equal distance from the center,
+is exaggerated.  To advocate the rejection of Christ's command of
+non-resistance to evil, or its adaptation to the needs of life,
+implies a misunderstanding of the teaching of Christ.
+
+And those who do so certainly do not understand it.  They do not
+understand that this teaching is the institution of a new theory
+of life, corresponding to the new conditions on which men have
+entered now for eighteen hundred years, and also the definition of
+the new conduct of life which results from it.  They do not
+believe that Christ meant to say what he said; or he seems to them
+to have said what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other
+places accidentally, or through his lack of intelligence or of
+cultivation.
+
+    [Footnote: Here, for example, is a characteristic
+    view of that kind from the American journal the ARENA
+    (October, 1890): "New Basis of Church Life."  Treating
+    of the significance of the Sermon on the Mount and
+    non-resistance to evil in particular, the author,
+    being under no necessity, like the Churchmen, to
+    hide its significance, says:
+
+      "Christ in fact preached complete communism and
+      anarchy; but one must learn to regard Christ always
+      in his historical and psychological significance.
+      Like every advocate of the love of humanity, Christ
+      went to the furthest extreme in his teaching.  Every
+      step forward toward the moral perfection of humanity
+      is always guided by men who see nothing but their
+      vocation.  Christ, in no disparaging sense be it
+      said, had the typical temperament of such a reformer.
+      And therefore we must remember that his precepts
+      cannot be understood literally as a complete
+      philosophy of life.  We ought to analyze his words
+      with respect for them, but in the spirit of criticism,
+      accepting what is true," etc.
+
+    Christ would have been happy to say what he ought, but
+    he was not able to express himself as exactly and
+    clearly as we can in the spirit of criticism, and
+    therefore let us correct him.  All that he said about
+    meekness, sacrifice, lowliness, not caring for the
+    morrow, was said by accident, through lack of knowing
+    how to express himself scientifically.]
+
+Matt. vi. 25-34: "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for
+your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
+your body, what ye shall put on.  Is not the life more than meat,
+and the body than rainment?  Behold the fouls of the air; for they
+sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your
+heavenly Father feedeth them.  Are ye not much better than they?
+Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit onto his stature?
+And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the
+field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet
+I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
+like one of these.  Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the
+field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
+he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?  Therefore take
+no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink?
+or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?  (For after all these things
+do the Gentiles seek), for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
+have need of all these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of
+God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
+unto you.  Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the
+morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient
+unto the day is the evil thereof."  Luke xii. 33-34: "Sell that ye
+have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a
+treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief
+approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.  For where your treasure is,
+there will your heart be also."  Sell all thou hast and follow me;
+and he who will not leave father, or mother, or children, or
+brothers, or fields, or house, he cannot be my disciple.  Deny
+thyself, take up thy cross each day and follow me.  My meat is to
+do the will of him that sent me, and to perform his works.  Not my
+will, but thine be done; not what I will, but as thou wilt.  Life
+is to do not one's will, but the will of God.
+
+All these principles appear to men who regard them from the
+standpoint of a lower conception of life as the expression of an
+impulsive enthusiasm, having no direct application to life.  These
+principles, however, follow from the Christian theory of life,
+just as logically as the principles of paying a part of one's
+private gains to the commonwealth and of sacrificing one's life in
+defense of one's country follow from the state theory of life.
+
+As the man of the stale conception of life said to the savage: Reflect,
+bethink yourself! The life of your individuality cannot be true life,
+because that life is pitiful and passing. But the life of a society and
+succession of individuals, family, clan, tribe, or state, goes on
+living, and therefore a man must sacrifice his own individuality for the
+life of the family or the state. In exactly the same way the Christian
+doctrine says to the man of the social, state conception of life, Repent
+ye--[GREEK WORD]-i. e., bethink yourself, or you will be ruined.
+Understand that this casual, personal life which now comes into being
+and to-morrow is no more can have no permanence, that no external means,
+no construction of it can give it consecutiveness and permanence. Take
+thought and understand that the life you are living is not real
+life--the life of the family, of society, of the state will not save you
+from annihilation. The true, the rational life is only possible for man
+according to the measure in which he can participate, not in the family
+or the state, but in the source of life--the Father; according to the
+measure in which he can merge his life in the life of the Father. Such
+is undoubtedly the Christian conception of life, visible in every
+utterance of the Gospel.
+
+    [TRANSCRIBIST'S NOTE: The GREEK WORD above used Greek letters,
+    spelled: mu-epsilon-tau-alpha-nu-omicron-zeta-epsilon-tau-
+    epsilon]
+
+One may not share this view of life, one may reject it, one may show its
+inaccuracy and its erroneousness, but we cannot judge of the Christian
+teaching without mastering this view of life. Still less can one
+criticise a subject on a higher plane from a lower point of view. From
+the basement one cannot judge of the effect of the spire. But this is
+just what the learned critics of the day try to do. For they share the
+erroneous idea of the orthodox believers that they are in possession of
+certain infallible means for investigating a subject. They fancy if they
+apply their so-called scientific methods of criticism, there can be no
+doubt of their conclusion being correct.
+
+This testing the subject by the fancied infallible method of
+science is the principal obstacle to understanding the Christian
+religion for unbelievers, for so-called educated people.  From
+this follow all the mistakes made by scientific men about the
+Christian religion, and especially two strange misconceptions
+which, more than everything else, hinder them from a correct
+understanding of it.  One of these misconceptions is that the
+Christian moral teaching cannot be carried out, and that therefore
+it has either no force at all--that is, it should not be accepted
+as the rule of conduct--or it must be transformed, adapted to the
+limits within which its fulfillment is possible in our society.
+Another misconception is that the Christian doctrine of love of
+God, and therefore of his service, is an obscure, mystic
+principle, which gives no definite object for love, and should
+therefore be replaced by the more exact and comprehensible
+principles of love for men and the service of humanity.
+
+The first misconception in regard to the impossibility of
+following the principle is the result of men of the state
+conception of life unconsciously taking that conception as the
+standard by which the Christian religion directs men, and taking
+the Christian principle of perfection as the rule by which that
+life is to be ordered; they think and say that to follow Christ's
+teaching is impossible, because the complete fulfillment of all
+that is required by this teaching would put an end to life.  "If a
+man were to carry out all that Christ teaches, he would destroy
+his own life; and if all men carried it out, then the human race
+would come to an end," they say.
+
+"If we take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat and what
+we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, do not defend
+our life, nor resist evil by force, lay down our life for others,
+and observe perfect chastity, the human race cannot exist," they
+say.
+
+And they are perfectly right if they take the principle of
+perfection given by Christ's teaching as a rule which everyone is
+bound to fulfill, just as in the state principles of life everyone
+is bound to carry out the rule of paying taxes, supporting the
+law, and so on.
+
+The misconception is based precisely on the fact that the teaching
+of Christ guides men differently from the way in which the
+precepts founded on the lower conception of life guide men.  The
+precepts of the state conception of life only guide men by
+requiring of them an exact fulfillment of rules or laws.  Christ's
+teaching guides men by pointing them to the infinite perfection of
+their heavenly Father, to which every man independently and
+voluntarily struggles, whatever the degree of his imperfection in
+the present.
+
+The misunderstanding of men who judge of the Christian principle
+from the point of view of the state principle, consists in the
+fact that on the supposition that the perfection which Christ
+points to, can be fully attained, they ask themselves (just as
+they ask the same question on the supposition that state laws will
+be carried out) what will be the result of all this being carried
+out?  This supposition cannot be made, because the perfection held
+up to Christians is infinite and can never be attained; and Christ
+lays down his principle, having in view the fact that absolute
+perfection can never be attained, but that striving toward
+absolute, infinite perfection will continually increase the
+blessedness of men, and that this blessedness may be increased to
+infinity thereby.
+
+Christ is teaching not angels, but men, living and moving in the animal
+life. And so to this animal force of movement Christ, as it were,
+applies the new force-the recognition of Divine perfection-and thereby
+directs the movement by the resultant of these two forces..
+
+To suppose that human life is going in the direction to which
+Christ pointed it, is just like supposing that a little boat
+afloat on a rabid river, and directing its course almost exactly
+against the current, will progress in that direction.
+
+Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the
+parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the
+life of man is compounded: the force of his animal nature and the
+force of the consciousness of Kinship to God.  Saying nothing of
+the animal force which asserts itself, remains always the same,
+and is therefore independent of human will, Christ speaks only of
+the Divine force, calling upon a man to know it more closely, to
+set it more free from all that retards it, and to carry it to a
+higher degree of intensity.
+
+In the process of liberating, of strengthening this force, the
+true life of man, according to Christ's teaching, consists.  The
+true life, according to preceding religions, consists in carrying
+out rules, the law; according to Christ's teaching it consists in
+an ever closer approximation to the divine perfection held up
+before every man, and recognized within himself by every man, in
+an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of his
+will in the will of God, that fusion toward which man strives, and
+the attainment of which would be the destruction of the life me
+know.
+
+The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it
+is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be
+reached in infinity.
+
+The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility of life only
+when men mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a
+rule.  It is only then that the principles presented in Christ's
+teaching appear to be destructive of life.  These principles, on
+the contrary, are the only ones that make true life possible.
+Without these principles true life could not be possible.
+
+"One ought not to expect so much," is what people usually say in
+discussing the requirements of the Christian religion.  "One
+cannot expect to take absolutely no thought for the morrow, as is
+said in the Gospel, but only not to take too much thought for it;
+one cannot give away all to the poor, but one must give away a
+certain definite part; one need not aim at virginity, but one must
+avoid debauchery; one need not forsake wife and children, but one
+must not give too great a place to them in one's heart," and so
+on.
+
+But to speak like this is just like telling a man who is
+struggling on a swift river and is directing his course against
+the current, that it is impossible to cross the river rowing
+against the current, and that to cross it he must float in the
+direction of the point he wants to reach.
+
+In reality, in order to reach the place to which he wants to go,
+he must row with all his strength toward a point
+much higher up.
+
+To let go the requirements of the ideal means not only to diminish
+the possibility of perfection, but to make an end of the ideal
+itself.  The ideal that has power over men is not an ideal
+invented by someone, but the ideal that every man carries within
+his soul.  Only this ideal of complete infinite perfection has
+power over men, and stimulates them to action.  A moderate
+perfection loses its power of influencing men's hearts.
+
+Christ's teaching only has power when it demands absolute
+perfection--that is, the fusion of the divine nature which exists
+in every man's soul with the will of God--the union of the Son
+with the Father.  Life according to Christ's teaching consists of
+nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in every
+man, from the animal, and in bringing him closer to the Father.
+
+The animal existence of a man does not constitute human life
+alone.   Life, according to the will of God only, is also not
+human life.  Human life is a combination of the animal life and
+the divine life.  And the more this combination approaches to the
+divine life, the more life there is in it.
+
+Life, according to the Christian religion, is a progress toward
+the divine perfection.  No one condition, according to this
+doctrine, can be higher or lower than another.  Every condition,
+according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no
+consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainable perfection,
+and therefore in itself it does not imply a greater or lesser
+degree of life.  Increase of life, according to this, consists in
+nothing but the quickening of the progress toward perfection.  And
+therefore the progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus,
+of the woman that was a sinner, and of the robber on the cross,
+implies a higher degree of life than the stagnant righteousness of
+the Pharisee.  And therefore for this religion there cannot be
+rules which it is obligatory to obey.  The man who is at a lower
+level but is moving onward toward perfection is living a more
+moral, a better life, is more fully carrying out Christ's
+teaching, than the man on a much higher level of morality who is
+not moving onward toward perfection.
+
+It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the Father
+than those that were not lost.  The prodigal son, the piece of
+money lost and found again, were more precious than those that
+were not lost.
+
+The fulfillment of Christ's teaching consists in moving away from
+self toward God.  It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws
+and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching.  Every degree of
+perfection and every degree of imperfection are equal in it; no
+obedience to laws constitutes a fulfillment of this doctrine, and
+therefore for it there can be no binding rules and laws.
+
+From this fundamental distinction between the religion of Christ
+and all preceding religions based on the state conception of life,
+follows a corresponding difference in the special precepts of the
+state theory and the Christian precepts.  The precepts of the
+state theory of life insist for the most part on certain practical
+prescribed acts, by which men are justified and secure of being
+right.  The Christian precepts (the commandment of love is not a
+precept in the strict sense of the word, but the expression of the
+very essence of the religion) are the five commandments of the
+Sermon on the Mount--all negative in character.  They show only
+what at a certain stage of development of humanity men may not do.
+
+These commandments are, as it were, signposts on the endless road
+to perfection, toward which humanity is moving, showing the point
+of perfection which is possible at a certain period in the
+development of humanity.
+
+Christ has given expression in the Sermon on the Mount to the
+eternal ideal toward which men are spontaneously struggling, and
+also the degree of attainment of it to which men may reach in our
+times.
+
+The ideal is not to desire to do ill to anyone, not to provoke ill
+will, to love all men.  The precept, showing the level below which
+we cannot fall in the attainment of this ideal, is the prohibition
+of evil speaking.  And that is the first command.
+
+The ideal is perfect chastity, even in thought.  The precept,
+showing the level below which we cannot fall in the attainment of
+this ideal, is that of purity of married life, avoidance of
+debauchery.  That is the second command.
+
+The ideal is to take no thought for the future, to live in the
+present moment.  The precept, showing the level below which we
+cannot fall, is the prohibition of swearing, of promising anything
+in the future.  And that is the third command.
+
+The ideal is never for any purpose to use force.  The precept,
+showing the level below which we cannot fall is that of returning
+good for evil, being patient under wrong, giving the cloak also.
+That is the fourth command.
+
+The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us.  The precept,
+showing the level below which we cannot fall, is not to do evil to
+our enemies, to speak well of them, and to make no difference
+between them and our neighbors.
+
+All these precepts are indications of what, on our journey to
+perfection, we are already fully able to avoid, and what we must
+labor to attain now, and what we ought by degrees to translate
+into instinctive and unconscious habits.  But these precepts, far
+from constituting the whole of Christ's teaching and exhausting
+it, are simply stages on the way to perfection.  These precepts
+must and will be followed by higher and higher precepts on the way
+to the perfection held up by the religion.
+
+And therefore it is essentially a part of the Christian religion
+to make demands higher than those expressed in its precepts; and
+by no means to diminish the demands either of the ideal itself, or
+of the precepts, as people imagine who judge it from the
+standpoint of the social conception of life.
+
+So much for one misunderstanding of the scientific men, in
+relation to the import and aim of Christ's teaching.  Another
+misunderstanding arising from the same source consists in
+substituting love for men, the service of humanity, for the
+Christian principles of love for God and his service.
+
+The Christian doctrine to love God and serve him, and only as a
+result of that love to love and serve one's neighbor, seems to
+scientific men obscure, mystic, and arbitrary.  And they would
+absolutely exclude the obligation of love and service of God,
+holding that the doctrine of love for men, for humanity alone, is
+far more clear, tangible, and reasonable.
+
+Scientific men teach in theory that the only good and rational
+life is that which is devoted to the service of the whole of
+humanity.  That is for them the import of the Christian doctrine,
+and to that they reduce Christ's teaching.  They seek confirmation
+of their own doctrine in the Gospel, on the supposition that the
+two doctrines are really the same.
+
+This idea is an absolutely mistaken one.  The Christian doctrine
+has nothing in common with the doctrine of the Positivists,
+Communists, and all the apostles of the universal brotherhood of
+mankind, based on the general advantage of such a brotherhood.
+They differ from one another especially in Christianity's having a
+firm and clear basis in the human soul, while love for humanity is
+only a theoretical deduction from analogy.
+
+The doctrine of love for humanity alone is based on the social
+conception of life.
+
+The essence of the social conception of life consists in the
+transference of the aim of the individual life to the life of
+societies of individuals: family, clan, tribe, or state.  This
+transference is accomplished easily and naturally in its earliest
+forms, in the transference of the aim of life from the individual
+to the family and the clan.  The transference to the tribe or the
+nation is more difficult and requires special training.  And the
+transference of the sentiment to the state is the furthest limit
+which the process can reach.
+
+To love one's self is natural to everyone, and no one needs any
+encouragement to do so.  To love one's clan who support and
+protect one, to love one's wife, the joy and help of one's
+existence, one's children, the hope and consolation of one's life,
+and one's parents, who have given one life and education, is
+natural.  And such love, though far from being so strong as love
+of self, is met with pretty often.
+
+To love--for one's own sake, through personal pride--one's tribe,
+one's nation, though not so natural, is nevertheless common.  Love
+of one's own people who are of the same blood, the same tongue,
+and the same religion as one's self is possible, though far from
+being so strong as love of self, or even love of family or clan.
+But love for a state, such as Turkey, Germany, England, Austria,
+or Russia is a thing almost impossible.  And though it is
+zealously inculcated, it is only an imagined sentiment; it has no
+existence in reality.  And at that limit man's power of
+transferring his interest ceases, and he cannot feel any direct
+sentiment for that fictitious entity.  The Positivists, however,
+and all the apostles of fraternity on scientific principles,
+without taking into consideration the weakening of sentiment in
+proportion to the extension of its object, draw further deductions
+in theory in the same direction.  "Since," they say, "it was for
+the advantage of the individual to extend his personal interest to
+the family, the tribe, and subsequently to the nation and the
+state, it would be still more advantageous to extend his interest
+in societies of men to the whole of mankind, and so all to live
+for humanity just as men live for the family or the state."
+
+Theoretically it follows, indeed, having extended the love and
+interest for the personality to the family, the tribe, and thence
+to the nation and the state, it would be perfectly logical for men
+to save themselves the strife and calamities which result from the
+division of mankind into nations and states by extending their
+love to the whole of humanity.  This would be most logical, and
+theoretically nothing would appear more natural to its advocates,
+who do not observe that love is a sentiment which may or may not
+be felt, but which it is useless to advocate; and moreover, that
+love must have an object, and that humanity is not an object.  It
+is nothing but a fiction.
+
+The family, the tribe, even the state were not invented by men,
+but formed themselves spontaneously, like ant-hills or swarms of
+bees, and have a real existence.  The man who, for the sake of his
+own animal personality, loves his family, knows whom he loves:
+Anna, Dolly, John, Peter, and so on.  The man who loves his tribe
+and takes pride in it, knows that he loves all the Guelphs or all
+the Ghibellines; the man who loves the state knows that he loves
+France bounded by the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, and its principal
+city Paris, and its history and so on.  But the man who loves
+humanity--what does he love?  There is such a thing as a state, as
+a nation; there is the abstract conception of man; but humanity as
+a concrete idea does not, and cannot exist.
+
+Humanity!  Where is the definition of humanity?  Where does it end
+and where does it begin?  Does humanity end with the savage, the
+idiot, the dipsomaniac, or the madman?  If we draw a line
+excluding from humanity its lowest representatives, where are we
+to draw the line?  Shall we exclude the negroes like the
+Americans, or the Hindoos like some Englishmen, or the Jews like
+some others?  If we include all men without exception, why should
+we not include also the higher animals, many of whom are superior
+to the lowest specimens of the human race.
+
+We know nothing of humanity as an eternal object, and we know
+nothing of its limits.  Humanity is a fiction, and it is
+impossible to love it.  It would, doubtless, be very advantageous
+if men could love humanity just as they love their family.  It
+would be very advantageous, as Communists advocate, to replace the
+competitive, individualistic organization of men's activity by a
+social universal organization, so that each would be for all and
+all for each.
+
+Only there are no motives to lead men to do this.  The
+Positivists, the Communists, and all the apostles of fraternity on
+scientific principles advocate the extension to the whole of
+humanity of the love men feel for themselves, their families, and
+the state.  They forget that the love which they are discussing is
+a personal love, which might expand in a rarefied form to embrace
+a man's native country, but which disappears before it can embrace
+an artificial state such as Austria, England, or Turkey, and which
+we cannot even conceive of in relation to all humanity, an
+absolutely mystic conception.
+
+"A man loves himself (his animal personality), he loves his
+family, he even loves his native country.  Why should he not love
+humanity?  That would be such an excellent thing.  And by the way,
+it is precisely what is taught by Christianity."  So think the
+advocates of Positivist, Communistic, or Socialistic fraternity.
+
+It would indeed be an excellent thing.  But it can never be, for
+the love that is based on a personal or social conception of life
+can never rise beyond love for the state.
+
+The fallacy of the argument lies in the fact that the social
+conception of life, on which love for family and nation is
+founded, rests itself on love of self, and that love grows weaker
+and weaker as it is extended from self to family, tribe,
+nationality, and slate; and in the state we reach the furthest
+limit beyond which it cannot go.
+
+The necessity of extending the sphere of love is beyond dispute.
+But in reality the possibility of this love is destroyed by the
+necessity of extending its object indefinitely.  And thus the
+insufficiency of personal human love is made manifest.
+
+And here the advocates of Positivist, Communistic, Socialistic
+fraternity propose to draw upon Christian love to make up the
+default of this bankrupt human love; but Christian love only in
+its results, not in its foundations.  They propose love for
+humanity alone, apart from love for God.
+
+But such a love cannot exist.  There is no motive to produce it.
+Christian love is the result only of the Christian conception of
+life, in which the aim of life is to love and serve God.
+
+The social conception of life has led men, by a natural transition
+from love of self and then of family, tribe, nation, and state, to
+a consciousness of the necessity of love for humanity, a
+conception which has no definite limits and extends to all living
+things.  And this necessity for love of what awakens no kind of
+sentiment in a man is a contradiction which cannot be solved by
+the social theory of life.
+
+The Christian doctrine in its full significance can alone solve
+it, by giving a new meaning to life.  Christianity recognizes love
+of self, of family, of nation, and of humanity, and not only of
+humanity, but of everything living, everything existing; it
+recognizes the necessity of an infinite extension of the sphere of
+love.  But the object of this love is not found outside self in
+societies of individuals, nor in the external world, but within
+self, in the divine self whose essence is that very love, which
+the animal self is brought to feel the need of through its
+consciousness of its own perishable nature.
+
+The difference between the Christian doctrine and those which
+preceded it is that the social doctrine said: "Live in opposition
+to your nature [understanding by this only the animal nature],
+make it subject to the external law of family, society, and
+state."  Christianity says: "Live according to your nature
+[understanding by this the divine nature]; do not make it subject
+to anything--neither you (an animal self) nor that of others--and
+you will attain the very aim to which you are striving when you
+subject your external self."
+
+The Christian doctrine brings a man to the elementary
+consciousness of self, only not of the animal self, but of the
+divine self, the divine spark, the self as the Son of God, as much
+God as the Father himself, though confined in an animal husk.  The
+consciousness of being the Son of God, whose chief characteristic
+is love, satisfies the need for the extension of the sphere of
+love to which the man of the social conception of life had been
+brought.  For the latter, the welfare of the personality demanded
+an ever-widening extension of the sphere of love; love was a
+necessity and was confined to certain objects--self, family,
+society.  With the Christian conception of life, love is not a
+necessity and is confined to no object; it is the essential
+faculty of the human soul.  Man loves not because it is his
+interest to love this or that, but because love is the essence of
+his soul, because he cannot but love.
+
+The Christian doctrine shows man that the essence of his soul is
+love--that his happiness depends not on loving this or that
+object, but on loving the principle of the whole--God, whom he
+recognizes within himself as love, and therefore he loves all
+things and all men.
+
+In this is the fundamental difference between the Christian
+doctrine and the doctrine of the Positivists, and all the
+theorizers about universal brotherhood on non-Christian
+principles.
+
+Such are the two principal misunderstandings relating to the
+Christian religion, from which the greater number of false
+reasonings about it proceed.  The first consists in the belief
+that Christ's teaching instructs men, like all previous religions,
+by rules, which they are bound to follow, and that these rules
+cannot be fulfilled.  The second is the idea that the whole
+purport of Christianity is to teach men to live advantageously
+together, as one family, and that to attain this we need only
+follow the rule of love to humanity, dismissing all thought of
+love of God altogether.
+
+The mistaken notion of scientific men that the essence of
+Christianity consists in the supernatural, and that its moral
+teaching is impracticable, constitutes another reason
+of the failure of men of the present day to understand
+Christianity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
+
+Men Think they can Accept Christianity without Altering their
+Life--Pagan Conception of Life does not Correspond with Present Stage of
+Development of Humanity, and Christian Conception Alone Can Accord with
+it--Christian Conception of Life not yet Understood by Men, but the
+Progress of Life itself will Lead them Inevitably to Adopt it--The
+Requirements of a New Theory of Life Always Seem Incomprehensible,
+Mystic, and Supernatural--So Seem the Requirements of the Christian
+Theory of Life to the Majority of Men--The Absorption of the Christian
+Conception of Life will Inevitably be Brought About as the Result of
+Material and Spiritual Causes--The Fact of Men Knowing the Requirements
+of the Higher View of Life, and yet Continuing to Preserve Inferior
+Organizations of Life, Leads to Contradictions and Sufferings which
+Embitter Existence and Must Result in its Transformation--The
+Contradictions of our Life--The Economic Contradiction and the Suffering
+Induced by it for Rich and Poor Alike--The Political Contradiction and
+the Sufferings Induced by Obedience to the Laws of the State--The
+International Contradiction and the Recognition of it by Contemporaries:
+Komarovsky, Ferri, Booth, Passy, Lawson, Wilson, Bartlett, Defourney,
+Moneta--The Striking Character of the Military Contradiction.
+
+
+There are many reasons why Christ's teaching is not understood.
+One reason is that people suppose they have understood it when
+they have decided, as the Churchmen do, that it was revealed by
+supernatural means, or when they have studied, as the scientific
+men do, the external forms in which it has been manifested.
+Another reason is the mistaken notion that it is impracticable,
+and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love for humanity.
+But the principal reason, which is the source of all the other
+mistaken ideas about it, is the notion that Christianity is a
+doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of
+life.
+
+Men who are used to the existing order of things, who like it and
+dread its being changed, try to take the doctrine as a collection
+of revelations and rules which one can accept without their
+modifying one's life.  While Christ's teaching is not only a
+doctrine which gives rules which a man must follow, it unfolds a
+new meaning in life, and defines a whole world of human activity
+quite different from all that has preceded it and appropriate to
+the period on which man is entering.
+
+The life of humanity changes and advances, like the life of the
+individual, by stages, and every stage has a theory of life
+appropriate to it, which is inevitably absorbed by men.  Those who
+do not absorb it consciously, absorb it unconsciously.  It is the
+same with the changes in the beliefs of peoples and of all
+humanity as it is with the changes of belief of individuals.  If
+the father of a family continues to be guided in his conduct by
+his childish conceptions of life, life becomes so difficult for
+him that he involuntarily seeks another philosophy and readily
+absorbs that which is appropriate to his age.
+
+That is just what is happening now to humanity at this time of
+transition through which we are passing, from the pagan conception
+of life to the Christian.  The socialized man of the present day
+is brought by experience of life itself to the necessity of
+abandoning the pagan conception of life, which is inappropriate to
+the present stage of humanity, and of submitting to the obligation
+of the Christian doctrines, the truths of which, however corrupt
+and misinterpreted, are still known to him, and alone offer him a
+solution of the contradictions surrounding him.
+
+If the requirements of the Christian doctrine seem strange and
+even alarming to the man of the social theory of life, no less
+strange, incomprehensible, and alarming to the savage of ancient
+times seemed the requirements of the social doctrine when it was
+not fully understood and could not be foreseen in its results.
+
+"It is unreasonable," said the savage, "to sacrifice my peace of
+mind or my life in defense of something incomprehensible,
+impalpable, and conventional--family, tribe, or nation; and above
+all it is unsafe to put oneself at the disposal of the power of
+others."
+
+But the time came when the savage, on one hand, felt, though
+vaguely, the value of the social conception of life, and of its
+chief motor power, social censure, or social approbation--glory,
+and when, on the other hand, the difficulties of his personal life
+became so great that he could not continue to believe in the value
+of his old theory of life.  Then he accepted the social, state
+theory of life and submitted to it.
+
+That is just what the man of the social theory of life is passing
+through now.
+
+"It is unreasonable," says the socialized man, "to sacrifice my
+welfare and that of my family and my country in order to fulfill
+some higher law, which requires me to renounce my most natural and
+virtuous feelings of love of self, of family, of kindred, and of
+country; and above all, it is unsafe to part with the security of
+life afforded by the organization of government."
+
+But the time is coming when, on one hand, the vague consciousness
+in his soul of the higher law, of love to God and his neighbor,
+and, on the other hand, the suffering, resulting from the
+contradictions of life, will force the man to reject the social
+theory and to assimilate the new one prepared ready for him, which
+solves all the contradictions and removes all his sufferings--the
+Christian theory of life.  And this time has now come.
+
+We, who thousands of years ago passed through the transition, from
+the personal, animal view of life to the socialized view, imagine
+that that transition was an inevitable and natural one; but this
+transition through which we have been passing for the last eighteen
+hundred years seems arbitrary, unnatural, and alarming.  But we
+only fancy this because that first transition has been so fully
+completed that the practice attained by it has become unconscious
+and instinctive in us, while the present transition is not yet
+over and we have to complete it consciously.
+
+It took ages, thousands of years, for the social conception of
+life to permeate men's consciousness.  It went through various
+forms and has now passed into the region of the instinctive
+through inheritance, education, and habit.  And therefore it seems
+natural to us.  But five thousand years ago it seemed as unnatural
+and alarming to men as the Christian doctrine in its true sense
+seems to-day.
+
+We think to-day that the requirements of the Christian doctrine--of
+universal brotherhood, suppression of national distinctions, abolition
+of private property, and the strange injunction of non-resistance to
+evil by force--demand what is impossible. But it was just the same
+thousands of years ago, with every social or even family duty, such as
+the duty of parents to support their children, of the young to maintain
+the old, of fidelity in marriage. Still more strange, and even
+unreasonable, seemed the state duties of submitting to the appointed
+authority, and paying taxes, and fighting in defense of the country, and
+so on. All such requirements seem simple, comprehensible, and natural to
+us to-day, and we see nothing mysterious or alarming in them. But three
+or five thousand years ago they seemed to require what was impossible.
+
+The social conception of life served as the basis of religion
+because at the time when it was first presented to men it seemed
+to them absolutely incomprehensible, mystic, and supernatural.
+Now that we have outlived that phase of the life of humanity, we
+understand the rational grounds for uniting men in families,
+communities, and states.  But in antiquity the duties involved by
+such association were presented under cover of the supernatural
+and were confirmed by it.
+
+The patriarchal religions exalted the family, the tribe, the
+nation.  State religions deified emperors and states.  Even now
+most ignorant people--like our peasants, who call the Tzar an
+earthly god--obey state laws, not through any rational recognition
+of their necessity, nor because they have any conception of the
+meaning of state, but through a religious sentiment.
+
+In precisely the same way the Christian doctrine is presented to
+men of the social or heathen theory of life to-day, in the guise
+of a supernatural religion, though there is in reality nothing
+mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about it.  It is simply the
+theory of life which is appropriate to the present degree of
+material development, the present stage of growth of humanity, and
+which must therefore inevitably be accepted.
+
+The time will come--it is already coming--when the Christian principles
+of equality and fraternity, community of property, non-resistance of
+evil by force, will appear just as natural and simple as the principles
+of family or social life seem to us now.
+
+Humanity can no more go backward in its development than the
+individual man.  Men have outlived the social, family, and state
+conceptions of life. Now they must go forward and assimilate the
+next and higher conception of life, which is what is now taking
+place.  This change is brought about in two ways: consciously
+through spiritual causes, and unconsciously through material
+causes.
+
+Just as the individual man very rarely changes his way of life at
+the dictates of his reason alone, but generally continues to live
+as before, in spite of the new interests and aims revealed to him
+by his reason, and only alters his way of living when it has
+become absolutely opposed to his conscience, and consequently
+intolerable to him; so, too, humanity, long after it has learnt
+through its religions the new interests and aims of life, toward
+which it must strive, continues in the majority of its
+representatives to live as before, and is only brought to accept
+the new conception by finding it impossible to go on living its
+old life as before.
+
+Though the need of a change of life is preached by the religious
+leaders and recognized and realized by the most intelligent men,
+the majority, in spite of their reverential attitude to their
+leaders, that is, their faith in their teaching, continue to be
+guided by the old theory of life in their present complex
+existence.  As though the father of a family, knowing how he ought
+to behave at his age, should yet continue through habit and
+thoughtlessness to live in the same childish way as he did in
+boyhood.
+
+That is just what is happening in the transition of humanity from
+one stage to another, through which we are passing now.  Humanity
+has outgrown its social stage and has entered upon a new period.
+It recognizes the doctrine which ought to be made the basis of
+life in this new period.  But through inertia it continues to keep
+up the old forms of life.  From this inconsistency between the new
+conception of life and practical life follows a whole succession
+of contradictions and sufferings which embitter our life and
+necessitate its alteration.
+
+One need only compare the practice of life with the theory of it,
+to be dismayed at the glaring antagonism between our conditions of
+life and our conscience.
+
+Our whole life is in flat contradiction with all we know, and with
+all we regard as necessary and right.  This contradiction runs
+through everything, in economic life, in political life, and in
+international life.  As though we had forgotten what we knew and
+put away for a time the principles we believe in (we cannot help
+still believing in them because they are the only foundation we
+have to base our life on) we do the very opposite of all that our
+conscience and our common sense require of us.
+
+We are guided in economical, political, and international
+questions by the principles which were appropriate to men of three
+or five thousand years ago, though they are directly opposed to
+our conscience and the conditions of life in which we are placed
+to-day.
+
+It was very well for the man of ancient times to live in a society
+based on the division of mankind into masters and slaves, because
+he believed that such a distinction was decreed by God and must
+always exist.  But is such a belief possible in these days?
+
+The man of antiquity could believe he had the right to enjoy the
+good things of this world at the expense of other men, and to keep
+them in misery for generations, since he believed that men came
+from different origins, were base or noble in blood, children of
+Ham or of Japhet.  The greatest sages of the world, the teachers
+of humanity, Plato and Aristotle, justified the existence of
+slaves and demonstrated the lawfulness of slavery; and even three
+centuries ago, the men who described an imaginary society of the
+future, Utopia, could not conceive of it without slaves.
+
+Men of ancient and medieval times believed, firmly believed, that
+men are not equal, that the only true men are Persians, or Greeks,
+or Romans, or Franks.  But we cannot believe that now.  And people
+who sacrifice themselves for the principles of aristocracy and of
+patriotism to-duty, don't believe and can't believe what they
+assert.
+
+We all know and cannot help knowing--even though we may never have
+heard the idea clearly expressed, may never have read of it, and
+may never have put it into words, still through unconsciously
+imbibing the Christian sentiments that are in the air--with our
+whole heart we know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental
+truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one
+Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak;
+we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love
+implanted by our common Father in our hearts.
+
+Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of to-day,
+whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of
+philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or
+superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that
+all men have an equal right to life and the good things of life,
+and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another,
+that all are equal.  Everyone knows this, beyond doubt; everyone
+feels it in his whole being.  Yet at the same time everyone sees
+all round him the division of men into two castes--the one,
+laboring, oppressed, poor, and suffering, the other idle,
+oppressing, luxurious, and profligate.  And everyone not only sees
+this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he
+takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience
+condemns.  And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of
+this contradiction and his share in it.
+
+Whether he be master or slave, the man of to-day cannot help
+constantly feeling the painful opposition between his conscience
+and actual life, and the miseries resulting from it.
+
+The toiling masses, the immense majority of mankind who are
+suffering under the incessant, meaningless, and hopeless toil and
+privation in which their whole life is swallowed up, still find
+their keenest suffering in the glaring contrast between what is
+and what ought to be, according to all the beliefs held by
+themselves, and those who have brought them to that condition and
+keep them in it.
+
+They know that they are in slavery and condemned to privation and
+darkness to minister to the lusts of the minority who keep them
+down.  They know it, and they say so plainly.  And this knowledge
+increases their sufferings and constitutes its bitterest sting.
+
+The slave of antiquity knew that he was a slave by nature, but our
+laborer, while he feels he is a slave, knows that he ought not to
+be, and so he tastes the agony of Tantalus, forever desiring and
+never gaining what might and ought to be his.
+
+The sufferings of the working classes, springing from the
+contradiction between what is and what ought to be, are increased
+tenfold by the envy and hatred engendered by their consciousness
+of it.
+
+The laborer of the present day would not cease to suffer even if
+his toil were much lighter than that of the slave of ancient
+times, even if he gained an eight-hour working day and a wage of
+three dollars a day.  For he is working at the manufacture of
+things which he will not enjoy, working not by his own will for
+his own benefit, but through necessity, to satisfy the desires of
+luxurious and idle people in general, and for the profit of a
+single rich man, the owner of a factory or workshop in particular.
+And he knows that all this is going on in a world in which it is a
+recognized scientific principle that labor alone creates wealth,
+and that to profit by the labor of others is immoral, dishonest,
+and punishable by law; in a world, moreover, which professes to
+believe Christ's doctrine that we are all brothers, and that true
+merit and dignity is to be found in serving one's neighbor, not in
+exploiting him.  All this he knows, and he cannot but suffer
+keenly from the sharp contrast between what is and what ought to
+be.
+
+"According to all principles, according to all I know, and what
+everyone professes," the workman says to himself.  "I ought to be
+free, equal to everyone else, and loved; and I am--a slave,
+humiliated and hated."  And he too is filled with hatred and tries
+to find means to escape from his position, to shake off the enemy
+who is over-riding him, and to oppress him in turn.  People say,
+"Workmen have no business to try to become capitalists, the poor
+to try to put themselves in the place of the rich."  That is a
+mistake.  The workingmen and the poor would be wrong if they tried
+to do so in a world in which slaves and masters were regarded as
+different species created by God; but they are living in a world
+which professes the faith of the Gospel, that all are alike sons
+of God, and so brothers and equal.  And however men may try to
+conceal it, one of the first conditions of Christian life is love,
+not in words but in deeds.
+
+The man of the so-called educated classes lives in still more
+glaring inconsistency and suffering.  Every educated man, if he
+believes in anything, believes in the brotherhood of all men, or
+at least he has a sentiment of humanity, or else of justice, or
+else he believes in science.  And all the while he knows that his
+whole life is framed on principles in direct opposition to it all,
+to all the principles of Christianity, humanity, justice, and
+science.
+
+He knows that all the habits in which he has been brought up, and
+which he could not give up without suffering, can only be
+satisfied through the exhausting, often fatal, toil of oppressed
+laborers, that is, through the most obvious and brutal violation
+of the principles of Christianity, humanity, and justice, and even
+of science (that is, economic science).  He advocates the
+principles of fraternity, humanity, justice, and science, and yet
+he lives so that he is dependent on the oppression of the working
+classes, which he denounces, and his whole life is based on the
+advantages gained by their oppression.  Moreover he is directing
+every effort to maintaining this state of things so flatly opposed
+to all his beliefs.
+
+We are all brothers--and yet every morning a brother or a sister
+must empty the bedroom slops for me.  We are all brothers, but
+every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such
+things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their
+health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them.
+We are all brothers, yet I live by working in a bank, or
+mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my
+brothers.  We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for
+prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute
+whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about,
+and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed.  We are all
+brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from
+needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle.
+We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false
+Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which
+only serve's to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.
+I take a stipend as priest or bishop for deceiving men in the
+matter of the greatest importance to them.  We are all brothers,
+but I will not give the poor the benefit of my educational,
+medical, or literary labors except for money.  We are all
+brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit murder,
+for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or
+fortifications.
+
+The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency.
+The more delicate a man's conscience is, the more painful this
+contradiction is to him.
+
+A man of sensitive conscience cannot but suffer if he lives such a
+life.  The only means by which he can escape from this suffering
+is by blunting his conscience, but even if some  men succeed in
+dulling their conscience they cannot dull their fears.
+
+The men of the higher dominating classes whose conscience is
+naturally not sensitive or has become blunted, if they don't
+suffer through conscience, suffer from fear and hatred.  They are
+bound to suffer.  They know all the hatred of them existing, and
+inevitably existing in the working classes.  They are aware that
+the working classes know that they are deceived and exploited, and
+that they are beginning to organize themselves to shake off
+oppression and revenge themselves on their oppressors.  The higher
+classes see the unions, the strikes, the May Day Celebrations, and
+feel the calamity that is threatening them, and their terror
+passes into an instinct of self-defense and hatred.  They know
+that if for one instant they are worsted in the struggle with
+their oppressed slaves, they will perish, because the slaves are
+exasperated and their exasperation is growing more intense with
+every day of oppression.  The oppressors, even if they wished to
+do so, could not make an end to oppression.  They know that they
+themselves will perish directly they even relax the harshness of
+their oppression.  And they do not relax it, in spite of all their
+pretended care for the welfare of the working classes, for the
+eight-hour day, for regulation of the labor of minors and of
+women, for savings banks and pensions.  All that is humbug, or
+else simply anxiety to keep the slave fit to do his work.  But the
+slave is still a slave, and the master who cannot live without a
+slave is less disposed to set him free than ever.
+
+The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a
+man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down,
+not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows
+that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself be
+stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his
+hand.  And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the
+reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched
+from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to
+it.  Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered
+either by the stings of conscience or by terror.
+
+So much for the economic contradiction.  The political
+contradiction is even more striking.
+
+All men are brought up to the habit of obeying the laws of the
+state before everything.  The whole existence of modern times is
+defined by laws.  A man marries and is divorced, educates his
+children, and even (in many countries) professes his religious
+faith in accordance with the law.  What about the law then which
+defines our whole existence?  Do men believe in it?  Do they
+regard it as good?  Not at all.  In the majority of cases people
+of the present time do not believe in the justice of the law, they
+despise it, but still they obey it.  It was very well for the
+men of the ancient world to observe their laws.  They firmly
+believed that their law (it was generally of a religious
+character) was the only just law, which everyone ought to obey.
+But is it so with us? we know and cannot help knowing that the law
+of our country is not the one eternal law; that it is only one of
+the many laws of different countries, which are equally imperfect,
+often obviously wrong and unjust, and are criticised from every
+point of view in the newspapers.  The Jew might well obey his
+laws, since he had not the slightest doubt that God had written
+them with his finger; the Roman too might well obey the laws which
+he thought had been dictated by the nymph Egeria.  Men might well
+observe the laws if they believed the Tzars who made them were
+God's anointed, or even if they thought they were the work of
+assemblies of lawgivers who had the power and the desire to make
+them as good as possible.  But we all know how our laws are
+made.  We have all been behind the scenes, we know that they are
+the product of covetousness, trickery, and party struggles; that
+there is not and cannot be any real justice in them.  And so
+modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political
+laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature.
+Men have long ago recognized that it is irrational to obey a law
+the justice of which is very doubtful, and so they cannot but
+suffer in obeying a law which they do not accept as judicious and
+binding.
+
+A man cannot but suffer when his whole life is defined beforehand
+for him by laws, which he must obey under threat of punishment,
+though he does not believe in their wisdom or justice, and often
+clearly perceives their injustice, cruelty, and artificiality.
+
+We recognize the uselessness of customs and import duties, and are
+obliged to pay them.  We recognize the uselessness of the
+expenditure on the maintenance of the Court and other members of
+Government, and we regard the teaching of the Church as injurious,
+but we are obliged to bear our share of the expenses of these
+institutions.  We regard the punishments inflicted by law as cruel
+and shameless, but we must assist in supporting them.  We regard
+as unjust and pernicious the distribution of landed property, but
+we are obliged to submit to it.  We see no necessity for wars and
+armies, but we must bear terribly heavy burdens in support of
+troops and war expenses.
+
+But this contradiction is nothing in comparison with the
+contradiction which confronts us when we turn to international
+questions, and which demands a solution, under pain of the loss of
+the sanity and even the existence of the human race.  That is the
+contradiction between the Christian conscience and war.
+
+We are all Christian nations living the same spiritual life, so that
+every noble and pregnant thought, springing up at one end of the world,
+is at once communicated to the whole of Christian humanity and evokes
+everywhere the same emotion at pride and rejoicing without distinction
+of nationalities. We who love thinkers, philanthropists, poets, and
+scientific men of foreign origin, and are as proud of the exploits of
+Father Damien as if he were one of ourselves, we, who have a simple love
+for men of foreign nationalities, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and
+Englishmen, who respect their qualities, are glad to meet them and make
+them so warmly welcome, cannot regard war with them as anything heroic.
+We cannot even imagine without horror the possibility of a disagreement
+between these people and ourselves which would call for reciprocal
+murder. Yet we are all bound to take a hand in this slaughter which is
+bound to come to pass to-morrow not to-day.
+
+It was very well for the Jew, the Greek, and the Roman to defend
+the independence of his nation by murder.  For he piously believed
+that his people was the only true, fine, and good people dear to
+God, and all the rest were Philistines, barbarians.  Men of
+medieval times--even up to the end of the last and beginning of
+this century--might continue to hold this belief.  But however
+much we work upon ourselves we cannot believe it.  And this
+contradiction for men of the present day has become so full of
+horror that without its solution life is no longer possible.
+
+"We live in a time which is full of inconsistencies," writes Count
+Komarovsky, the professor of international law, in his learned
+treatise.
+
+   "The press of all countries is continually expressing the
+   universal desire for peace, and the general sense of its
+   necessity for all nations.
+
+   "Representatives of governments, private persons, and official
+   organs say the same thing; it is repeated in parliamentary
+   debates, diplomatic correspondence, and even in state treaties.
+   At the same time governments are increasing the strength of
+   their armies every year, levying fresh taxes, raising loans,
+   and leaving as a bequest to future generations the duty of
+   repairing the blunders of the senseless policy of the present.
+   What a striking contrast between words and deeds!  Of course
+   governments will plead in justification of these measures that
+   all their expenditure and armament are exclusively for purposes
+   of defense.  But it remains a mystery to every disinterested
+   man whence they can expect attacks if all the great powers are
+   single-hearted in their policy, in pursuing nothing but self
+   defense.  In reality it looks as if each of the great powers
+   were every instant anticipating an attack on the part of the
+   others.  And this results in a general feeling of insecurity
+   and superhuman efforts on the part of each government to
+   increase their forces beyond those of the other powers.  Such a
+   competition of itself increases the danger of war.  Nations
+   cannot endure the constant increase of armies for long, and
+   sooner or later they will prefer war to all the disadvantages
+   of their present position and the constant menace of war.  Then
+   the most trifling pretext will be sufficient to throw the whole
+   of Europe into the fire of universal war.  And it is a mistaken
+   idea that such a crisis might deliver us from the political and
+   economical troubles that are crushing us.  The experience of
+   the wars of latter years teaches us that every war has only
+   intensified national hatreds, made military burdens more
+   crushing and insupportable, and rendered the political and
+   economical grievous and insoluble."
+
+"Modern Europe keeps under arms an active army of nine millions of
+men," writes Enrico Ferri,
+
+   "besides fifteen millions of reserve, with an outlay of four
+   hundred millions of francs per annum.  By continual increase of
+   the armed force, the sources of social and individual
+   prosperity are paralyzed, and the state of the modern world may
+   be compared to that of a man who condemns himself to wasting
+   from lack of nutrition in order to provide himself with arms,
+   losing thereby the strength to use the arms he provides, under
+   the weight of which he will at last succumb."
+
+Charles Booth, in his paper read in London before the Association
+for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, June 26,
+1887, says the same thing.  After referring to the same number,
+nine millions of the active army and fifteen millions of reserve,
+and the enormous expenditure of governments on the support and
+arming of these forces, he says:
+
+   "These figures represent only a small part of the real cost,
+   because besides the recognized expenditure of the war budget of
+   the various nations, we ought also to take into account the
+   enormous loss to society involved in withdrawing from it such
+   an immense number of its most vigorous men, who are taken from
+   industrial pursuits and every kind of labor, as well as the
+   enormous interest on the sums expended on military preparations
+   without any return.  The inevitable result of this expenditure
+   on war and preparations for war is a continually growing
+   national debt.  The greater number of loans raised by the
+   governments of Europe were with a view to war.  Their total sum
+   amounts to four hundred millions sterling, and these debts are
+   increasing every year."
+
+The same Professor Komarovsky says in another place:
+
+   "We live in troubled times.  Everywhere we hear complaints of
+   the depression of trade and manufactures, and the wretchedness
+   of the economic position generally, the miserable conditions of
+   existence of the working classes, and the universal
+   impoverishment of the masses. But in spite of this, governments
+   in their efforts to maintain their independence rush to the
+   greatest extremes of senselessness. New taxes and duties are
+   being devised everywhere, and the financial oppression of the
+   nations knows no limits.  If we glance at the budgets of the
+   states of Europe for the last hundred years, what strikes us
+   most of all is their rapid and continually growing increase.
+
+   "How can we explain this extraordinary phenomenon which sooner
+   or later threatens us all with inevitable bankruptcy?
+
+   "It is caused beyond dispute by the expenditure for the
+   maintenance of armaments which swallows up a third and even a
+   half of all the expenditure of European states.  And the most
+   melancholy thing is that one can foresee no limit to this
+   augmentation of the budget and impoverishment of the masses.
+   What is socialism but a protest against this abnormal position
+   in which the greater proportion of the population of our world
+   is placed?
+
+"We are ruining ourselves," says Frederick Passy in a letter read
+before the last Congress of Universal Peace (in 1890) in London,
+
+   "we are ruining ourselves in order to be able to take part in
+   the senseless wars of the future or to pay the interest on
+   debts we have incurred by the senseless and criminal wars of
+   the past.  We are dying of hunger so as to secure the means of
+   killing each other."
+
+Speaking later on of the way the subject is looked at in France,
+he says:
+
+   "We believe that, a hundred years after the Declaration of the
+   Rights of Man and of the citizen, the time has come to
+   recognize the rights of nations and to renounce at once and
+   forever all those undertakings based on fraud and force, which,
+   under the name of conquests, are veritable crimes against
+   humanity, and which, whatever the vanity of monarchs and the
+   pride of nations may think of them, only weaken even those who
+   are triumphant over them."
+
+"I am surprised at the way religion is carried on in this
+country," said Sir Wilfrid Lawson at the same congress.
+
+   "You send a boy to Sunday school, and you tell him: 'Dear boy,
+   you must love your enemies.  If another boy strikes you, you
+   mustn't hit him back, but try to reform him by loving him.'
+   Well.  The boy stays in the Sunday school till he is fourteen
+   or fifteen, and then his friends send him into the army.  What
+   has he to do in the army?  He certainly won't love his enemy;
+   quite the contrary, if he can only get at him, he will run him
+   through with his bayonet.  That is the nature of all religious
+   teaching in this country.  I do not think that that is a very
+   good way of carrying out the precepts of religion.  I think if
+   it is a good thing for a boy to love his enemy, it is good for
+   a grown-up man."
+
+"There are in Europe twenty-eight millions of men under arms,"
+says Wilson,
+
+   "to decide disputes, not by discussion, but by murdering one
+   another.  That is the accepted method for deciding disputes
+   among Christian nations.  This method is, at the same time,
+   very expensive, for, according to the statistics I have read,
+   the nations of Europe spent in the year 1872 a hundred and
+   fifty millions sterling on preparations for deciding disputes
+   by means of murder.  It seems to me, therefore, that in such a
+   state of things one of two alternatives must be admitted:
+   either Christianity is a failure, or those who have undertaken
+   to expound it have failed in doing so.  Until our warriors are
+   disarmed and our armies disbanded, the have not the right to
+   call ourselves a Christian nation."
+
+In a conference on the subject of the duty of Christian ministers
+to preach against war, G. D. Bartlett said among other things:
+
+   "If I understand the Scriptures, I say that men are only
+   playing with Christianity so long as they ignore the question
+   of war.  I have lived a longish life and have heard our
+   ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times.
+   Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of
+   forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible
+   with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic.  The
+   idea that we could get on without war was regarded as
+   unmitigated weakness and folly."
+
+The Catholic priest Defourney has expressed himself in the same
+spirit.  "One of the first precepts of the eternal law inscribed
+in the consciences of all men," says the Abby Defourney,
+
+   "is the prohibition of taking the life or shedding the blood of
+   a fellow-creature without sufficient cause, without being
+   forced into the necessity of it.  This is one of the
+   commandments which is most deeply stamped in the heart of man.
+   But so soon as it is a question of war, that is, of shedding
+   blood in torrents, men of the present day do not trouble
+   themselves about a sufficient cause.  Those who take part in
+   wars do not even think of asking themselves whether there is
+   any justification for these innumerable murders, whether they
+   are justifiable or unjustifiable, lawful or unlawful, innocent
+   or criminal; whether they are breaking that fundamental
+   commandment that forbids killing without lawful cause.
+   But their conscience is mute.  War has ceased to be something
+   dependent on moral considerations.  In warfare men have in all
+   the toil and dangers they endure no other pleasure than that of
+   being conquerors, no sorrow other than that of being conquered.
+   Don't tell me that they are serving their country.  A great
+   genius answered that long ago in the words that have become a
+   proverb: 'Without justice, what is an empire but a great band
+   of brigands?'  And is not every band of brigands a little
+   empire?  They too have their laws; and they too make war to
+   gain booty, and even for honor.
+
+   "The aim of the proposed institution [the institution of an
+   international board of arbitration] is that the nations of
+   Europe may cease to be nations of robbers, and their armies,
+   bands of brigands.  And one must add, not only brigands, but
+   slaves.  For our armies are simply gangs of slaves at the
+   disposal of one or two commanders or ministers, who exercise a
+   despotic control over them without any real responsibility, as
+   we very well know.
+
+   "The peculiarity of a slave is that he is a mere tool in the
+   hands of his master, a thing, not a man.  That is just what
+   soldiers, officers, and generals are, going to murder and be
+   murdered at the will of a ruler or rulers.  Military slavery is
+   an actual fact, and it is the worst form of slavery, especially
+   now when by means of compulsory service it lays its fetters on
+   the necks of all the strong and capable men of a nation, to
+   make them instruments of murder, butchers of human flesh, for
+   that is all they are taken and trained to do.
+
+   "The rulers, two or three in number, meet together in cabinets,
+   secretly deliberate without registers, without publicity, and
+   consequently without responsibility, and send men to be
+   murdered."
+
+"Protests against armaments, burdensome to the people, have not
+originated in our times," says Signor E. G. Moneta.
+
+   "Hear what Montesquieu wrote in his day.  'France [and one
+   might say, Europe] will be ruined by soldiers.  A new plague is
+   spreading throughout Europe.  It attacks sovereigns and forces
+   them to maintain an incredible number of armed men.  This
+   plague is infectious and spreads, because directly one
+   government increases its armament, all the others do likewise.
+   So that nothing is gained by it but general ruin.
+
+   "'Every government maintains as great an army as it possibly
+   could maintain if its people were threatened with
+   extermination, and people call peace this state of tension of
+   all against all.  And therefore Europe is so ruined that if
+   private persons were in the position of the governments of our
+   continent, the richest of them would not have enough to live
+   on.  We are poor though we have the wealth and trade of the
+   whole world.'
+
+   "That was written almost 150 years ago. The picture seems drawn
+   from the world of to-day. One thing only has changed-the form
+   of government.  In Montesquieu's time it was said that the
+   cause of the maintenance of great armaments was the despotic
+   power of kings, who made war in the hope of augmenting by
+   conquest their personal revenues and gaining glory.  People
+   used to say then: 'Ah, if only people could elect those who
+   would have the right to refuse governments the soldiers and the
+   money--then there would be an end to military politics.'  Now
+   there are representative governments in almost the whole of
+   Europe, and in spite of that, war expenditures and the
+   preparations for war have increased to alarming proportions.
+
+   "It is evident that the insanity of sovereigns has gained
+   possession of the ruling classes.  War is not made now because
+   one king has been wanting in civility to the mistress of
+   another king, as it was in Louis XIV.'s time.  But the natural
+   and honorable sentiments of national honor and patriotism are
+   so exaggerated, and the public opinion of one nation so excited
+   against another, that it is enough for a statement to be made
+   (even though it may be a false report) that the ambassador of
+   one state was not received by the principal personage of
+   another state to cause the outbreak of the most awful and
+   destructive war there has ever been seen.  Europe keeps more
+   soldiers under arms to-day than in the time of the great
+   Napoleonic wars.  All citizens with few exceptions are forced
+   to spend some years in barracks.  Fortresses, arsenals, and
+   ships are built, new weapons are constantly being invented, to
+   be replaced in a short time by fresh ones, for, sad to say,
+   science, which ought always to be aiming at the good of
+   humanity, assists in the work of destruction, and is constantly
+   inventing new means for killing the greatest number of men in
+   the shortest time.  And to maintain so great a multitude of
+   soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder,
+   hundreds of millions are spent annually, sums which would be
+   sufficient for the education of the people and for immense
+   works of public utility, and which would make it possible to
+   find a peaceful solution of the social question.
+
+   "Europe, then, is, in this respect, in spite of all the
+   conquests of science, in the same position as in the darkest
+   and most barbarous days of the Middle Ages.  All deplore this
+   state of things--neither peace nor war--and all would be glad
+   to escape from it.  The heads of governments all declare that
+   they all wish for peace, and vie with one another in the most
+   solemn protestations of peaceful intentions.  But the same day
+   or the next they will lay a scheme for the increase of the
+   armament before their legislative assembly, saying that these
+   are the preventive measures they take for the very purpose of
+   securing peace.
+
+   "But this is not the kind of peace we want.  And the nations
+   are not deceived by it.  True peace is based on mutual
+   confidence, while these huge armaments show open and utter lack
+   of confidence, if not concealed hostility, between states.
+   What should we say of a man who, wanting to show his friendly
+   feelings for his neighbor, should invite him to discuss their
+   differences with a loaded revolver in his hand?
+
+   "It is just this flagrant contradiction between the peaceful
+   professions and the warlike policy of governments which all
+   good citizens desire to put an end to, at any cost."
+
+People are astonished that every year there are sixty thousand
+cases of suicide in Europe, and those only the recognized and
+recorded cases--and excluding Russia and Turkey; but one ought
+rather to be surprised that there are so few.  Every man of the
+present day, if we go deep enough into the contradiction between
+his conscience and his life, is in a state of despair.
+
+Not to speak of all the other contradictions between modern life
+and the conscience, the permanently armed condition of Europe
+together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to
+drive any man to despair, to doubt of the sanity of mankind, and
+to terminate an existence in this senseless and brutal world.
+This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other
+contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it
+is only possible if one does not think of it--if one is able to
+forget it.
+
+What! all of us, Christians, not only profess to love one another, but
+do actually live one common life; we whose social existence beats with
+one common pulse--we aid one another, learn from one another, draw ever
+closer to one another to our mutual happiness, and find in this
+closeness the whole meaning of life!--and to-morrow some crazy ruler
+will say some stupidity, and another will answer in the same spirit, and
+then I must go expose myself to being murdered, and murder men--who have
+done me no harm--and more than that, whom I love. And this is not a
+remote contingency, but the very thing we are all preparing for, which
+is not only probable, but an inevitable certainty.
+
+To recognize this clearly is enough to drive a man out of his
+senses or to make him shoot himself.  And this is just what does
+happen, and especially often among military men.  A man need only
+come to himself for an instant to be impelled inevitably to such
+an end.
+
+And this is the only explanation of the dreadful intensity with
+which men of modern times strive to stupefy themselves, with
+spirits, tobacco, opium, cards, reading newspapers, traveling, and
+all kinds of spectacles and amusements.  These pursuits are
+followed up as an important, serious business.  And indeed they
+are a serious business.  If there were no external means of
+dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot
+themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's
+reason is the most intolerable condition.  And that is the
+condition of all men of the present day.  All men of the modern
+world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism
+between their conscience and their way of life.  This antagonism
+is apparent in economic as well as political life.  But most
+striking of all is the contradiction between the Christian law of
+the brotherhood of men existing in the conscience and the
+necessity under which all men are placed by compulsory military
+service of being prepared for hatred and murder--of being at the
+same time a Christian and a gladiator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ATTITUDE OF MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY TO WAR.
+
+People do not Try to Remove the Contradiction between Life and
+Conscience by a Change of Life, but their Cultivated Leaders Exert Every
+Effort to Obscure the Demands of Conscience, and justify their Life; in
+this Way they Degrade Society below Paganism to a State of Primeval
+Barbarism--Undefined Attitude of Modern Leaders of Thought to War, to
+Universal Militarism, and to Compulsory Service in Army--One Section
+Regards War as an Accidental Political Phenomenon, to be Avoided by
+External Measures only--Peace Congress--The Article in the REVUE DES
+REVUES--Proposition of Maxime du Camp--Value of Boards of Arbitration
+and Suppression of Armies--Attitude of Governments to Men of this
+Opinion and What they Do--Another Section Regards War as Cruel, but
+Inevitable--Maupassant--Rod--A Third Section Regard War as Necessary,
+and not without its Advantages--Doucet-Claretie-Zola-Vogüé.
+
+
+The antagonism between life and the conscience may be removed in
+two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.  And
+there would seem there can be no doubt as to these alternatives.
+
+A man may cease to do what he regards as wrong, but he cannot
+cease to consider wrong what is wrong.  Just in the same way all
+humanity may cease to do what it regards as wrong, but far from
+being able to change, it cannot even retard for a time the
+continual growth of a clearer recognition of what is wrong and
+therefore ought not to be.  And therefore it would seem inevitable
+for Christian men to abandon the pagan forms of society which they
+condemn, and to reconstruct their social existence on the
+Christian principles they profess.
+
+So it would be were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a
+force in men and nations as in inanimate bodies.  In men it takes
+the form of the psychological principle, so truly expressed in the
+words of the Gospel, "They have loved darkness better than light
+because their deeds were evil."  This principle shows itself in
+men not trying to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves
+that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are
+used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.
+
+Slavery was opposed to all the moral principles advocated by Plato
+and Aristotle, yet neither of them saw that, because to renounce
+slavery would have meant the break up of the life they were
+living.  We see the same thing in our modern world.
+
+The division of men into two castes, as well as the use of force
+in government and war, are opposed to every moral principle
+professed by our modern society.  Yet the cultivated and advanced
+men of the day seem not to see it.
+
+The majority, if not all, of the cultivated men of our day try
+unconsciously to maintain the old social conception of life, which
+justifies their position, and to hide from themselves and others
+its insufficiency, and above all the necessity of adopting the
+Christian conception of life, which will mean the break up of the
+whole existing social order.  They struggle to keep up the
+organization based on the social conception of life, but do not
+believe in it themselves, because it is extinct and it is
+impossible to believe in it.
+
+All modern literature--philosophical, political, and artistic--is
+striking in this respect.  What wealth of idea, of form, of color,
+what erudition, what art, but what a lack of serious matter, what
+dread of any exactitude of thought or expression!  Subtleties,
+allegories, humorous fancies, the widest generalizations, but
+nothing simple and clear, nothing going straight to the point,
+that is, to the problem of life.
+
+But that is not all; besides these graceful frivolities, our
+literature is full of simple nastiness and brutality, of arguments
+which would lead men back in the most refined way to primeval
+barbarism, to the principles not only of the pagan, but even of
+the animal life, which we have left behind us five thousand years
+ago.
+
+And it could not be otherwise.  In their dread of the Christian
+conception of life which will destroy the social order, which some
+cling to only from habit, others also from interest, men cannot
+but be thrown back upon the pagan conception of life and the
+principles based on it. Nowadays we see advocated not only
+patriotism and aristocratic principles just as they were advocated
+two thousand years ago, but even the coarsest epicureanism and
+animalism, only with this difference, that the men who then
+professed those views believed in them, while nowadays even the
+advocates of such views do not believe in them, for they have no
+meaning for the present day.  No one can stand still when the
+earth is shaking under his feet. If we do not go forward we must
+go back.  And strange and terrible to say, the cultivated men of
+our day, the leaders of thought, are in reality with their subtle
+reasoning drawing society back, not to paganism even, but to a
+state of primitive barbarism.
+
+This tendency on the part of the leading thinkers of the day is
+nowhere more apparent than in their attitude to the phenomenon in
+which all the insufficiency of the social conception of life is
+presented in the most concentrated form--in their attitude, that
+is, to war, to the general arming of nations, and to universal
+compulsory service.
+
+The undefined, if not disingenuous, attitude of modern thinkers to
+this phenomenon is striking. It takes three forms in cultivated
+society.  One section look at it as an incidental phenomenon,
+arising out of the special political situation of Europe, and
+consider that this state of things can be reformed without a
+revolution in the whole internal social order of nations, by
+external measures of international diplomacy.  Another section
+regard it as something cruel and hideous, but at the same time
+fated and inevitable, like disease and death.  A third party with
+cool indifference consider war as an inevitable phenomenon,
+beneficial in its effects and therefore desirable.
+
+Men look at the subject from different points of view, but all
+alike talk of war as though it were something absolutely
+independent of the will of those who take part in it.  And
+consequently they do not even admit the natural question which
+presents itself to every simple man: "How about me--ought I to
+take any part in it?"  In their view no question of this kind even
+exists, and every man, however he may regard war from a personal
+standpoint, must slavishly submit to the requirements of the
+authorities on the subject.
+
+The attitude of the first section of thinkers, those who see a way
+out of war in international diplomatic measures, is well expressed
+in the report of the last Peace Congress in London, and the
+articles and letters upon war that appeared in No. 8 of the REVUE
+DES REVUES, 1891.  The congress after gathering together from
+various quarters the verbal and written opinion of learned men
+opened the proceedings by a religious service, and after listening
+to addresses for five whole days, concluded them by a public
+dinner and speeches.  They adopted the following resolutions:
+
+   "1. The congress affirms its belief that the brotherhood of man
+   involves as a necessary consequence a brotherhood of nations.
+
+   "2. The congress recognizes the important influence that
+   Christianity exercises on the moral and political progress of
+   mankind, and earnestly urges upon ministers of the Gospel and
+   other religious teachers the duty of setting forth the
+   principles of peace and good will toward men. AND IT RECOMMENDS
+   THAT THE THIRD SUNDAY IN DECEMBER BE SET APART FOR THAT
+   PURPOSE.
+
+   "3. The congress expresses the opinion that all teachers of
+   history should call the attention of the young to the grave
+   evils inflicted on mankind in all ages by war, and to the fact
+   that such war has been waged for most inadequate causes.
+
+   "4. The congress protests against the use of military drill in
+   schools by way of physical exercise, and suggests the formation
+   of brigades for saving life rather than of a quasi-military
+   character; and urges the desirability of impressing on the
+   Board of Examiners who formulate the questions for examination
+   the propriety of guiding the minds of children in the
+   principles of peace.
+
+   "5. The congress holds that the doctrine of the Rights of Man
+   requires that the aboriginal and weaker races, their
+   territories and liberties, shall be guarded from injustice and
+   fraud, and that these races shall be shielded against the vices
+   so prevalent among the so-called advanced races of men.  It
+   further expresses its conviction that there should be concert
+   of action among the nations for the accomplishment of these
+   ends.  The congress expresses its hearty appreciation of the
+   resolutions of the Anti-slavery Conference held recently at
+   Brussels for the amelioration of the condition of the peoples
+   of Africa.
+
+   "6. The congress believes that the warlike prejudices and
+   traditions which are still fostered in the various
+   nationalities, and the misrepresentations by leaders of public
+   opinion in legislative assemblies or through the press, are
+   often indirect causes of war, and that these evils should be
+   counteracted by the publication of accurate information tending
+   to the removal of misunderstanding between nations, and
+   recommends the importance of considering the question of
+   commencing an international newspaper with such a purpose.
+
+   "7. The congress proposes to the Inter-parliamentary Conference
+   that the utmost support should be given to every project for
+   unification of weights and measures, coinage, tariff, postage,
+   and telegraphic arrangements, etc., which would assist in
+   constituting a commercial, industrial, and scientific union of
+   the peoples.
+
+   "8. The congress, in view of the vast social and moral
+   influence of woman, urges upon every woman to sustain the
+   things that make for peace, as otherwise she incurs grave
+   responsibility for the continuance of the systems of
+   militarism.
+
+   "9. The congress expresses the hope that the Financial Reform
+   Association and other similar societies in Europe and America
+   should unite in considering means for establishing equitable
+   commercial relations between states, by the reduction of import
+   duties.  The congress feels that it can affirm that the whole
+   of Europe desires peace, and awaits with impatience the
+   suppression of armaments, which, under the plea of defense,
+   become in their turn a danger by keeping alive mutual distrust,
+   and are, at the same time, the cause of that general economic
+   disturbance which stands in the way of settling in a
+   satisfactory manner the problems of labor and poverty, which
+   ought to take precedence of all others.
+
+   "10. The congress, recognizing that a general disarmament would
+   be the best guarantee of peace and would lead to the solution
+   of the questions which now most divide states, expresses the
+   wish that a congress of representatives of all the states of
+   Europe may be assembled as soon as possible to consider the
+   means of effecting a gradual general disarmament.
+
+   "11. The congress, in consideration of the fact that the
+   timidity of a single power might delay the convocation of the
+   above-mentioned congress, is of opinion that the government
+   which should first dismiss any considerable number of soldiers
+   would confer a signal benefit on Europe and mankind, because it
+   would, by public opinion, oblige other governments to follow
+   its example, and by the moral force of this accomplished fact
+   would have increased rather than diminished the conditions of
+   its national defense.
+
+   "12. The congress, considering the question of disarmament, as
+   of peace in general, depends on public opinion, recommends the
+   peace societies, as well as all friends of peace, to be active
+   in its propaganda, especially at the time of parliamentary
+   elections, in order that the electors should give their votes
+   to candidates who are pledged to support Peace, Disarmament,
+   and Arbitration.
+
+   "13. The congress congratulates the friends of peace on the
+   resolution adopted by the International American Conference,
+   held at Washington in April last, by which it was recommended
+   that arbitration should be obligatory in all controversies,
+   whatever their origin, except only those which may imperil the
+   independence of one of the nations involved.
+
+   "14. The congress recommends this resolution to the attention
+   of European statesmen, and expresses the ardent desire that
+   similar treaties may speedily be entered into between the other
+   nations of the world.
+
+   "15. The congress expresses its satisfaction at the adoption by
+   the Spanish Senate on June 16 last of a project of law
+   authorizing the government to negotiate general or special
+   treaties of arbitration for the settlement of all disputes
+   except those relating to the independence or internal
+   government of the states affected; also at the adoption of
+   resolutions to a like effect by the Norwegian Storthing and by
+   the Italian Chamber.
+
+   "16. The congress resolves that a committee be appointed to
+   address communications to the principal political, religious,
+   commercial, and labor and peace organizations, requesting them
+   to send petitions to the governmental authorities praying that
+   measures be taken for the formation of suitable tribunals for
+   the adjudicature of international questions so as to avoid the
+   resort to war.
+
+   "17. Seeing (1) that the object pursued by all peace societies
+   is the establishment of judicial order between nations, and (2)
+   that neutralization by international treaties constitutes a
+   step toward this judicial state and lessens the number of
+   districts in which war can be carried on, the congress
+   recommends a larger extension of the rule of neutralization,
+   and expresses the wish, (1) that all treaties which at present
+   assure to certain states the benefit of neutrality remain in
+   force, or if necessary be amended in a manner to render the
+   neutrality more effective, either by extending neutralization
+   to the whole of the state or by ordering the demolition of
+   fortresses, which constitute rather a peril than a guarantee
+   for neutrality; (2) that new treaties in harmony with the
+   wishes of the populations concerned be concluded for
+   establishing the neutralization of other states.
+
+   "18. The sub-committee proposes, (1) that the annual Peace
+   Congress should be held either immediately before the meeting
+   of the annual Sub-parliamentary Conference, or immediately
+   after it in the same town; (2) that the question of an
+   international peace emblem be postponed SINE DIE; (3) that the
+   following resolutions be adopted:
+
+      "a. To express satisfaction at the official overtures of the
+      Presbyterian Church in the United States addressed to the
+      highest representatives of each church organization in
+      Christendom to unite in a general conference to promote the
+      substitution of international arbitration for war.
+
+      "b. To express in the name of the congress its profound
+      reverence for the memory of Aurelio Saffi, the great Italian
+      jurist, a member of the committee of the International
+      League of Peace and Liberty.
+
+   "(4) That the memorial adopted by this congress and
+   signed by the president to the heads of the civilized states
+    should, as far as practicable, be presented to each power by
+    influential deputations.
+
+   "(5) That the following resolutions be adopted:
+
+      "a. A resolution of thanks to the presidents of the various
+      sittings of the congress.
+
+      "b. A resolution of thanks to the chairman, the secretaries,
+      and the members of the bureau of the congress.
+
+      "c. A resolution of thanks to the conveners and members of
+      the sectional committees.
+
+      "d. A resolution of thanks to Rev. Canon Scott Holland, Rev.
+      Dr. Reuen Thomas, and Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon for their pulpit
+      addresses before the congress, and also to the authorities
+      of St. Paul's Cathedral, the City Temple, and Stamford Hill
+      Congregational Church for the use of those buildings for
+      public services.
+
+      "e. A letter of thanks to her Majesty for permission to
+      visit Windror Castle.
+
+      "f. And also a resolution of thanks to the Lord Mayor and
+      Lady Mayoress, to Mr. Passmore Edwards, and other friends
+      who have extended their hospitality to the members of the
+      congress.
+
+   "19. The congress places on record a heartfelt expression of
+   gratitude to Almighty God for the remarkable harmony and
+   concord which have characterized the meetings of the assembly,
+   in which so many men and women of varied nations, creeds,
+   tongues, and races have gathered in closest co-operation, and
+   for the conclusion of the labors of the congress; and expresses
+   its firm and unshaken belief in the ultimate triumph of the
+   cause of peace and of the principles advocated at these
+   meetings."
+
+The fundamental idea of the congress is the necessity (1) of
+diffusing among all people by all means the conviction of the
+disadvantages of war and the great blessing of peace, and (2) of
+rousing governments to the sense of the superiority of
+international arbitration over war and of the consequent
+advisability and necessity of disarmament.  To attain the first
+aim the congress has recourse to teachers of history, to women,
+and to the clergy, with the advice to the latter to preach on the
+evil of war and the blessing of peace every third Sunday in
+December.  To attain the second object the congress appeals to
+governments with the suggestion that they should disband their
+armies and replace war by arbitration.
+
+To preach to men of the evil of war and the blessing of peace!
+But the blessing of peace is so well known to men that, ever since
+there have been men at all, their best wish has been expressed in
+the greeting, "Peace be with you."  So why preach about it?
+
+Not only Christians, but pagans, thousands of years ago, all
+recognized the evil of war and the blessing of peace.  So that the
+recommendation to ministers of the Gospel to preach on the evil of
+war and the blessing of peace every third Sunday in December is
+quite superfluous.
+
+The Christian cannot but preach on that subject every day of his
+life.  If Christians and preachers of Christianity do not do so,
+there must be reasons for it.  And until these have been removed
+no recommendations will be effective.  Still less effective will
+be the recommendations to governments to disband their armies and
+replace them by international boards of arbitration.  Governments,
+too, know very well the difficulty and the burdensomeness of
+raising and maintaining forces, and if in spite of that knowledge
+they do, at the cost of terrible strain and effort, raise and
+maintain forces, it is evident that they cannot do otherwise, and
+the recommendation of the congress can never change it.  But the
+learned gentlemen are unwilling to see that, and keep hoping to
+find a political combination, through which governments shall be
+induced to limit their powers themselves.
+
+"Can we get rid of war"? asks a learned writer in the REVUE DES
+REVUES.
+
+   "All are agreed that if it were to break out in Europe, its
+    consequences would be like those of the great inroads of
+    barbarians.  The existence of whole nationalities would be at
+   stake, and therefore the war would be desperate, bloody,
+   atrocious.
+
+   "This consideration, together with the terrible engines of
+   destruction invented by modern science, retards the moment of
+   declaring war, and maintains the present temporary situation,
+   which might continue for an indefinite period, except for the
+   fearful cost of maintaining armaments which are exhausting the
+   European states and threatening to reduce nations to a state of
+   misery hardly less than that of war itself.
+
+   "Struck by this reflection, men of various countries have tried
+   to find means for preventing, or at least for softening, the
+   results of the terrible slaughter with which we are threatened.
+
+   "Such are the questions brought forward by the Peace Congress
+   shortly to be held in Rome, and the publication of a pamphlet,
+   Sur le Désarmement.'
+
+   "It is unhappily beyond doubt that with the present
+   organization of the majority of European states, isolated from
+   one another and guided by distinct interests, the absolute
+   suppression of war is an illusion with which it would be
+   dangerous to cheat ourselves.  Wiser rules and regulations
+   imposed on these duels between nations might, however, at least
+   limit its horrors.
+
+   "It is equally chimerical to reckon on projects of disarmament,
+   the execution of which is rendered almost impossible by
+   considerations of a popular character present to the mind of
+   all our readers. [This probably means that France cannot
+   disband its army before taking its revenge.]  Public opinion is
+   not prepared to accept them, and moreover, the international
+   relations between different peoples are not such as to make
+   their acceptance possible.  Disarmament imposed on one nation
+   by another in circumstances threatening its security would be
+   equivalent to a declaration of war.
+
+   "However, one may admit that an exchange of ideas between the
+   nations interested could aid, to a certain degree, in bringing
+   about the good understanding indispensable to any negotiations,
+   and would render possible a considerable reduction of the
+   military expenditure which is crushing the nations of Europe
+   and greatly hindering the solution of the social question,
+   which each individually must solve on pain of having internal
+   war as the price for escaping it externally.
+
+   "We might at least demand the reduction of the enormous
+   expenses of war organized as it is at present with a view to
+   the power of invasion within twenty-four hours and a decisive
+   battle within a week of the declaration of war.
+
+   "We ought to manage so that states could not make the attack
+   suddenly and invade each other's territories within twenty-four
+   hours."
+
+This practical notion has been put forth by Maxime du Camp, and
+his article concludes with it.
+
+The propositions of M. du Camp are as follows:
+
+   1. A diplomatic congress to be held every year.
+
+   2. No war to be declared till two months after the incident
+   which provoked it.  (The difficulty here would be to decide
+   precisely what incident did provoke the war, since whenever war
+   is declared there are very many such incidents, and one would
+   have to decide from which to reckon the two months' interval.)
+
+   3. No war to be declared before it has been submitted to a
+   plebiscitum of the nations preparing to take part in it.
+
+   4. No hostilities to be commenced till a month after the
+   official declaration of war.
+
+"No war to be declared.  No hostilities to be commenced," etc.
+But who is to arrange that no war is to be declared?  Who is to
+compel people to do this and that?  Who is to force states to
+delay their operations for a certain fixed time?  All the other
+states.  But all these others are also states which want holding
+in check and keeping within limits, and forcing, too.  Who is to
+force them, and how?  Public opinion.  But if there is a public
+opinion which can force governments to delay their operations for
+a fixed period, the same public opinion can force governments not
+to declare war at all.
+
+But, it will be replied, there may be such a balance of power,
+such a PONDÉRATION DE FORCES, as would lead states to hold back of
+their own accord.  Well, that has been tried and is being tried
+even now.  The Holy Alliance was nothing but that, the League of
+Peace was another attempt at the same thing, and so on.
+
+But, it will be answered, suppose all were agreed.  If all were
+agreed there would be no more war certainly, and no need for
+arbitration either.
+
+"A court of arbitration!  Arbitration shall replace war. Questions
+shall be decided by a court of arbitration. The Alabama question
+was decided by a court of arbitration, and the question of the
+Caroline Islands was submitted to the decision of the Pope.
+Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, and Holland have all declared that
+they prefer arbitration to war."
+
+I dare say Monaco has expressed the same preference.  The only
+unfortunate thing is that Germany, Russia, Austria, and France
+have not so far shown the same inclination.  It is amazing how men
+can deceive themselves when they find it necessary!  Governments
+consent to decide their disagreements by arbitration and to
+disband their armies!  The differences between Russia and Poland,
+between England and Ireland, between Austria and Bohemia, between
+Turkey and the Slavonic states, between France and Germany, to be
+soothed away by amiable conciliation!
+
+One might as well suggest to merchants and bankers that they
+should sell nothing for a greater price than they gave for it,
+should undertake the distribution of wealth for no profit, and
+should abolish money, as it would thus be rendered unnecessary.
+
+But since commercial and banking operations consist in nothing but
+selling for more than the cost price, this would be equivalent to
+an invitation to suppress themselves.  It is the same in regard to
+governments.  To suggest to governments that they should not have
+recourse to violence, but should decide their misunderstandings in
+accordance with equity, is inviting them to abolish themselves as
+rulers, and that no government can ever consent to do.
+
+The learned men form societies (there are more than a hundred such
+societies), assemble in congresses (such as those recently held in
+London and Paris, and shortly to be held in Rome), deliver
+addresses, eat public dinners and make speeches, publish journals,
+and prove by every means possible that the nations forced to
+support millions of troops are strained to the furthest limits of
+their endurance, that the maintenance of these huge armed forces
+is in opposition to all the aims, the interests, and the wishes of
+the people, and that it is possible, moreover, by writing numerous
+papers, and uttering a great many words, to bring all men into
+agreement and to arrange so that they shall have no antagonistic
+interests, and then there will be no more war.
+
+When I was a little boy they told me if I wanted to catch a bird I
+must put salt on its tail.  I ran after the birds with the salt in
+my hand, but I soon convinced myself that if I could put salt on a
+bird's tail, I could catch it, and realized that I had been
+hoaxed.
+
+People ought to realize the same fact when they read books and
+articles on arbitration and disarmament.
+
+If one could put salt on a bird's tail, it would be because it
+could not fly and there would be no difficulty in catching it.  If
+the bird had wings and did not want to be caught, it would not let
+one put salt on its tail, because the specialty of a bird is to
+fly.  In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not
+to obey, but to enforce obedience.  And a government is only a
+government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it
+always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its
+power.  But since it is on the army that the power of government
+rests, it will never give up the army, and the use of the army in
+war.
+
+The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and
+others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one
+set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as
+shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their
+collective capacity.  They have so long been persuading other
+people of this that at last they have persuaded themselves of it;
+and thus they often seriously suppose that government can be bound
+by considerations of justice.  But history shows that from Caesar
+to Napoleon, and from Napoleon to Bismarck, government is in its
+essence always a force acting in violation of justice, and that it
+cannot be otherwise.  Justice can have no binding force on a ruler
+or rulers who keep men, deluded and drilled in readiness for acts
+of violence--soldiers, and by means of them control others.  And
+so governments can never be brought to consent to diminish the
+number of these drilled slaves, who constitute their whole power
+and importance.
+
+Such is the attitude of certain learned men to the contradiction
+under which our society is being crushed, and such are their
+methods of solving it.  Tell these people that the whole matter
+rests on the personal attitude of each man to the moral and
+religious question put nowadays to everyone, the question, that
+is, whether it is lawful or unlawful for him to take his share of
+military service, and these learned gentlemen will shrug their
+shoulders and not condescend to listen or to answer you.  The
+solution of the question in their idea is to be found in reading
+addresses, writing books, electing presidents, vice-presidents,
+and secretaries, and meeting and speaking first in one town and
+then in another.  From all this speechifying and writing it will
+come to pass, according to their notions, that governments will
+cease to levy the soldiers, on whom their whole strength depends,
+will listen to their discourses, and will disband their forces,
+leaving themselves without any defense, not only against their
+neighbors, but also against their own subjects.  As though a band
+of brigands, who have some unarmed travelers bound and ready to be
+plundered, should be so touched by their complaints of the pain
+caused by the cords they are fastened with as to let them go
+again.
+
+Still there are people who believe in this, busy themselves over
+peace congresses, read addresses, and write books.  And
+governments, we may be quite sure, express their sympathy and make
+a show of encouraging them.  In the same way they pretend to
+support temperance societies, while they are living principally on
+the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education,
+when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support
+constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence
+of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition
+of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their
+oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity
+destroys all government.
+
+To be able to do this they have long ago elaborated methods
+encouraging temperance, which cannot suppress drunkenness; methods
+of supporting education, which not only fail to prevent ignorance,
+but even increase it; methods of aiming at freedom and
+constitutionalism, which are no hindrance to despotism; methods of
+protecting the working classes, which will not free them from
+slavery; and a Christianity, too, they have elaborated, which does
+not destroy, but supports governments.
+
+Now there is something more for the government to encourage--peace. The
+sovereigns, who nowadays take counsel with their ministers, decide by
+their will alone whether the butchery of millions is to be begun this
+year or next. They know very well that all these discourses upon peace
+will not hinder them from sending millions of men to butchery when it
+seems good to them. They listen even with satisfaction to these
+discourses, encourage them, and take part in them.
+
+All this, far from being detrimental, is even of service to
+governments, by turning people's attention from the most important
+and pressing question: Ought or ought not each man called upon for
+military service to submit to serve in the army?
+
+"Peace will soon be arranged, thanks to alliances and congresses,
+to books and pamphlets; meantime go and put on your uniform, and
+prepare to cause suffering and to endure it for our benefit," is
+the government's line of argument.  And the learned gentlemen who
+get up congresses and write articles are in perfect agreement with
+it.
+
+This is the attitude of one set of thinkers.  And since it is that
+most beneficial to governments, it is also the most encouraged by
+all intelligent governments.
+
+Another attitude to war has something tragical in it.  There are
+men who maintain that the love for peace and the inevitability of
+war form a hideous contradiction, and that such is the fate of
+man.  These are mostly gifted and sensitive men, who see and
+realize all the horror and imbecility and cruelty of war, but
+through some strange perversion of mind neither see nor seek to
+find any way out of this position, and seem to take pleasure in
+teasing the wound by dwelling on the desperate position of
+humanity.  A notable example of such an attitude to war is to be
+found in the celebrated French writer Guy de Maupassant.  Looking
+from his yacht at the drill and firing practice of the French
+soldiers the following reflections occur to him:
+
+   "When I think only of this word war, a kind of terror seizes
+   upon me, as though I were listening to some tale of sorcery, of
+   the Inquisition, some long past, remote abomination, monstrous,
+   unnatural.
+
+   "When cannibalism is spoken of, we smile with pride,
+   proclaiming our superiority to these savages.  Which are the
+   savages, the real savages?  Those who fight to eat the
+   conquered, or those who fight to kill, for nothing but to kill?
+
+   "The young recruits, moving about in lines yonder, are destined
+   to death like the flocks of sheep driven by the butcher along
+   the road.  They will fall in some plain with a saber cut in the
+   head, or a bullet through the breast.  And these are young men
+   who might work, be productive and useful.  Their fathers are
+   old and poor.  Their mothers, who have loved them for twenty
+   years, worshiped them as none but mothers can, will learn in
+   six months' time, or a year perhaps, that their son, their boy,
+   the big boy reared with so much labor, so much expense, so much
+   love, has been thrown in a hole like some dead dog, after being
+   disemboweled by a bullet, and trampled, crushed, to a mass of
+   pulp by the charges of cavalry.  Why have they killed her boy,
+   her handsome boy, her one hope, her pride, her life?  She does
+   not know. Ah, why?
+
+   "War! fighting! slaughter! massacres of men!  And we have now,
+   in our century, with our civilization, with the spread of
+   science, and the degree of philosophy which the genius of man
+   is supposed to have attained, schools for training to kill, to
+   kill very far off, to perfection, great numbers at once, to
+   kill poor devils of innocent men with families and without any
+   kind of trial.
+
+   "AND WHAT IS MOST BEWILDERING IS THAT THE PEOPLE DO NOT RISE
+   AGAINST THEIR GOVERNMENTS.  FOR WHAT DIFFERENCE IS THERE
+   BETWEEN MONARCHIES AND REPUBLICS?  THE MOST BEWILDERING THING
+   IS THAT THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY IS NOT IN REVOLT AT THE WORD WAR."
+
+   "Ah! we shall always live under the burden of the ancient and
+   odious customs, the criminal prejudices, the ferocious ideas of
+   our barbarous ancestors, for we are beasts, and beasts we shall
+   remain, dominated by instinct and changed by nothing.  Would
+   not any other man than Victor Hugo have been exiled for that
+   mighty cry of deliverance and truth?  'To-day force is called
+   violence, and is being brought to judgment; war has been put on
+   its trial.  At the plea of the human race, civilization
+   arraigns warfare, and draws up the great list of crimes laid at
+   the charge of conquerors and generals.  The nations are coming
+   to understand that the magnitude of a crime cannot be its
+   extenuation; that if killing is a crime, killing many can be no
+   extenuating circumstance; that if robbery is disgraceful,
+   invasion cannot be glorious.  Ah! let us proclaim these
+   absolute truths; let us dishonor war!'
+
+"Vain wrath," continues Maupassant, "a poet's indignation.  War is
+held in more veneration than ever.
+
+   "A skilled proficient in that line, a slaughterer of genius,
+   Von Moltke, in reply to the peace delegates, once uttered these
+   strange words:
+
+   "'War is holy, war is ordained of God.  It is one of the most
+   sacred laws of the world.  It maintains among men all the great
+   and noble sentiments--honor, devotion, virtue, and courage, and
+   saves them in short from falling into the most hideous
+   materialism.'
+
+   "So, then, bringing millions of men together into herds,
+   marching by day and by night without rest, thinking of nothing,
+   studying nothing, learning nothing, reading nothing, being
+   useful to no one, wallowing in filth, sleeping in mud, living
+   like brutes in a continual state of stupefaction, sacking
+   towns, burning villages, ruining whole populations, then
+   meeting another mass of human flesh, falling upon them, making
+   pools of blood, and plains of flesh mixed with trodden mire and
+   red with heaps of corpses, having your arms or legs carried
+   off, your brains blown out for no advantage to anyone, and
+   dying in some corner of a field while your old parents, your
+   wife and children are perishing of hunger--that is what is
+   meant by not falling into the most hideous materialism!
+
+   "Warriors are the scourge of the world.  We struggle against
+   nature and ignorance and obstacles of all kinds to make our
+   wretched life less hard.  Learned men--benefactors of all--spend
+   their lives in working, in seeking what can aid, what be
+   of use, what can alleviate the lot of their fellows.  They
+   devote themselves unsparingly to their task of usefulness,
+   making one discovery after another, enlarging the sphere of
+   human intelligence, extending the bounds of science, adding
+   each day some new store to the sum of knowledge, gaining each
+   day prosperity, ease, strength for their country.
+
+   "War breaks out.  In six months the generals have destroyed the
+   work of twenty years of effort, of patience, and of genius.
+
+   "That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
+   materialism.
+
+   "We have seen it, war.  "We have seen men turned to brutes,
+   frenzied, killing for fun, for terror, for bravado, for
+   ostentation.  Then when right is no more, law is dead, every
+   notion of justice has disappeared.  We have seen men shoot
+   innocent creatures found on the road, and suspected because
+   they were afraid.  We have seen them kill dogs chained at their
+   masters' doors to try their new revolvers, we have seen them
+   fire on cows lying in a field for no reason whatever, simply
+   for the sake of shooting, for a joke.
+
+   "That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
+   materialism.
+
+   "Going into a country, cutting the man's throat who defends his
+   house because he wears a blouse and has not a military cap on
+   his head, burning the dwellings of wretched beings who have
+   nothing to eat, breaking furniture and stealing goods, drinking
+   the wine found in the cellars, violating the women in the
+   streets, burning thousands of francs' worth of powder, and
+   leaving misery and cholera in one's track--
+
+   "That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
+   materialism.
+
+   "What have they done, those warriors, that proves the least
+   intelligence?  Nothing.  What have they invented?  Cannons and
+   muskets.  That is all.
+
+   "What remains to us from Greece?  Books and statues.  Is Greece
+   great from her conquests or her creations?
+
+   "Was it the invasions of the Persians which saved Greece from
+   falling into the most hideous materialism?
+
+   "Were the invasions of the barbarians what saved and
+   regenerated Rome?
+
+   "Was it Napoleon I. who carried forward the great intellectual
+   movement started by the philosophers of the end of last
+   century?
+
+   "Yes, indeed, since government assumes the right of
+   annihilating peoples thus, there is nothing surprising in the
+   fact that the peoples assume the right of annihilating
+   governments.
+
+   "They defend themselves.  They are right.  No one has an
+   absolute right to govern others.  It ought only to be done for
+   the benefit of those who are governed.  And it is as much the
+   duty of anyone who governs to avoid war as it is the duty of a
+   captain of a ship to avoid shipwreck.
+
+   "When a captain has let his ship come to ruin, he is judged and
+   condemned, if he is found guilty of negligence or even
+   incapacity.
+
+   "Why should not the government be put on its trial after every
+   declaration of war?  IF THE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD THAT, IF THEY
+   THEMSELVES PASSED JUDGMENT ON MURDEROUS GOVERNMENTS, IF THEY
+   REFUSED TO LET THEMSELVES BE KILLED FOR NOTHING, IF THEY WOULD
+   ONLY TURN THEIR ARMS AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE GIVEN THEM TO THEM
+   FOR MASSACRE, ON THAT DAY WAR WOULD BE NO MORE.  BUT THAT DAY
+   WILL NEVER COME" [Footnote: "Sur l'Eau," pp. 71-80].
+
+The author sees all the horror of war.  He sees that it is caused
+by governments forcing men by deception to go out to slaughter and
+be slain without any advantage to themselves.  And he sees, too,
+that the men who make up the armies could turn their arms against
+the governments and bring them to judgment.  But he thinks that
+that will never come to pass, and that there is, therefore, no
+escape from the present position.
+
+   "I think war is terrible, but that it is inevitable; that
+   compulsory military service is as inevitable as death, and that
+   since government will always desire it, war will always exist."
+
+So writes this talented and sincere writer, who is endowed with
+that power of penetrating to the innermost core of the subjects
+which is the essence of the poetic faculty.  He brings before us
+all the cruelty of the inconsistency between men's moral sense and
+their actions, but without trying to remove it; seems to admit
+that this inconsistency must exist and that it is the poetic
+tragedy of life.
+
+Another no less gifted writer, Edouard Rod, paints in still more
+vivid colors the cruelty and madness of the present state of
+things.  He too only aims at presenting its tragic features,
+without suggesting or forseeing any issue from the position.
+
+   "What is the good of doing anything?  What is the good of
+   undertaking any enterprise?  And how are we to love men in
+   these troubled times when every fresh day is a menace of
+   danger?... All we have begun, the plans we are developing, our
+   schemes of work, the little good we may have been able to do,
+   will it not all be swept away by the tempest that is in
+   preparation?... Everywhere the earth is shaking under our feet
+   and storm-clouds are gathering on our horizon which will have
+   no pity on us.
+
+   "Ah! if all we had to dread were the revolution which is held
+   up as a specter to terrify us!  Since I cannot imagine a
+   society more detestable than ours, I feel more skeptical than
+   alarmed in regard to that which will replace it.  If I should
+   have to suffer from the change, I should be consoled by
+   thinking that the executioners of that day were the victims of
+   the previous time, and the hope of something better would help
+   us to endure the worst.  But it is not that remote peril which
+   frightens me.  I see another danger, nearer and far more cruel;
+   more cruel because there is no excuse for it, because it is
+   absurd, because it can lead to no good.  Every day one balances
+   the chances of war on the morrow, every day they become more
+   merciless.
+
+   "The imagination revolts before the catastrophe which is coming
+   at the end of our century as the goal of the progress of our
+   era, and yet we must get used to facing it.  For twenty years
+   past every resource of science has been exhausted in the
+   invention of engines of destruction, and soon a few charges of
+   cannon will suffice to annihilate a whole army.  No longer a
+   few thousands of poor devils, who were paid a price for their
+   blood, are kept under arms, but whole nations are under arms to
+   cut each other's throats.  They are robbed of their time now
+   (by compulsory service) that they may be robbed of their lives
+   later.  To prepare them for the work of massacre, their hatred
+   is kindled by persuading them that they are hated.  And
+   peaceable men let themselves be played on thus and go and fall
+   on one another with the ferocity of wild beasts; furious troops
+   of peaceful citizens taking up arms at an empty word of
+   command, for some ridiculous question of frontiers or colonial
+   trade interests--Heaven only knows what... They will go like
+   sheep to the slaughter, knowing all the while where they are
+   going, knowing that they are leaving their wives, knowing
+   that their children will want for food, full of misgivings, yet
+   intoxicated by the fine-sounding lies that are dinned into
+   their ears.  THEY WILL MARCH WITHOUT REVOLT, PASSIVE,
+   RESIGNED--THOUGH THE NUMBERS AND THE STRENGTH ARE THEIRS, AND
+   THEY MIGHT, IF THEY KNEW HOW TO CO-OPERATE TOGETHER, ESTABLISH
+   THE REIGN OF GOOD SENSE AND FRATERNITY, instead of the
+   barbarous trickery of diplomacy.  They will march to battle so
+   deluded, so duped, that they will believe slaughter to be a
+   duty, and will ask the benediction of God on their lust for
+   blood.  They will march to battle trampling underfoot the
+   harvests they have sown, burning the towns they have built--with
+   songs of triumph, festive music, and cries of jubilation.
+   And their sons will raise statues to those who have done most
+   in their slaughter.
+
+   "The destiny of a whole generation depends on the hour in which
+   some ill-fated politician may give the signal that will be
+   followed.  We know that the best of us will be cut down and our
+   work will be destroyed in embryo.  WE KNOW IT AND TREMBLE WITH
+   RAGE, BUT WE CAN DO NOTHING.  We are held fast in the toils of
+   officialdom and red tape, and too rude a shock would be needed
+   to set us free.  We are enslaved by the laws we set up for our
+   protection, which have become our oppression.  WE ARE BUT THE
+   TOOLS OF THAT AUTOCRATIC ABSTRACTION THE STATE, WHICH ENSLAVES
+   EACH INDIVIDUAL IN THE NAME OF THE WILL OF ALL, WHO WOULD ALL,
+   TAKEN INDIVIDUALLY, DESIRE EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY
+   WILL BE MADE TO DO.
+
+   "And if it were only a generation that must be sacrificed!  But
+   there are graver interests at stake.
+
+   "The paid politicians, the ambitious statesmen, who exploit the
+   evil passions of the populace, and the imbeciles who are
+   deluded by fine-sounding phrases, have so embittered national
+   feuds that the existence of a whole race will be at stake in
+   the war of the morrow. One of the elements that constitute the
+   modern world is threatened, the conquered people will be wiped
+   out of existence, and whichever it may be, we shall see a moral
+   force annihilated, as if there were too many forces to work for
+   good--we shall have a new Europe formed on foundations so
+   unjust, so brutal, so sanguinary, stained with so monstrous a
+   crime, that it cannot but be worse than the Europe of to-day--more
+   iniquitous, more barbarous, more violent.
+
+   "Thus one feels crushed under the weight of an immense
+   discouragement.  We are struggling in a CUL DE SAC with muskets
+   aimed at us from the housetops.  Our labor is like that of
+   sailors executing their last task as the ship begins to sink.
+    Our pleasures are those of the condemned victim, who is
+   offered his choice of dainties a quarter of an hour before his
+   execution.  Thought is paralyzed by anguish, and the most it is
+   capable of is to calculate--interpreting the vague phrases of
+   ministers, spelling out the sense of the speeches of
+   sovereigns, and ruminating on the words attributed to
+   diplomatists reported on the uncertain authority of the
+   newspapers--whether it is to be to-morrow or the day after,
+   this year or the next, that we are to be murdered.  So that one
+   might seek in vain in history an epoch more insecure, more
+   crushed under the weight of suffering" [footnote: "Le Sens de
+   la Vie," pp. 208-13].
+
+Here it is pointed out that the force is in the hands of those who
+work their own destruction, in the hands of the individual men who
+make up the masses; it is pointed out that the source of the evil
+is the government.  It would seem evident that the contradiction
+between life and conscience had reached the limit beyond which it
+cannot go, and after reaching this limit some solution of it must
+be found.
+
+But the author does not think so.  He sees in this the tragedy of
+human life, and after depicting all the horror of the position he
+concludes that human life must be spent in the midst of this
+horror.
+
+So much for the attitude to war of those who regard it as
+something tragic and fated by destiny.
+
+The third category consists of men who have lost all conscience
+and, consequently, all common sense and feeling of humanity.
+
+To this category belongs Moltke, whose opinion has been quoted
+above by Maupassant, and the majority of military men, who have
+been educated in this cruel superstition, live by it, and
+consequently are often in all simplicity convinced that war is not
+only an inevitable, but even a necessary and beneficial thing.
+This is also the view of some civilians, so-called educated and
+cultivated people.
+
+Here is what the celebrated academician Camille Doucet writes in
+reply to the editor of the REVUE DES REVUES, where several letters
+on war were published together:
+
+   "Dear Sir: When you ask the least warlike of academicians
+   whether he is a partisan of war, his answer is known
+   beforehand.
+
+   "Alas! sir, you yourself speak of the pacific ideal inspiring
+   your generous compatriots as a dream.
+
+   "During my life I have heard a great many good people protest
+   against this frightful custom of international butchery, which
+   all admit and deplore; but how is it to be remedied?
+
+   "Often, too, there have been attempts to suppress dueling; one
+   would fancy that seemed an easy task: but not at all!  All that
+   has been done hitherto with that noble object has never been
+   and never will be of use.
+
+   "All the congresses of both hemispheres may vote against war,
+   and against dueling too, but above all arbitrations,
+   conventions, and legislations there will always be the personal
+   honor of individual men, which has always demanded dueling, and
+   the interests of nations, which will always demand war.
+
+   "I wish none the less from the depths of my heart that the
+   Congress of Universal Peace may succeed at last in its very
+   honorable and difficult enterprise.
+
+   "I am, dear sir, etc.,
+   "CAMILLE DOUCET."
+
+The upshot of this is that personal honor requires men to fight,
+and the interests of nations require them to ruin and exterminate
+each other.  As for the efforts to abolish war, they call for
+nothing but a smile.
+
+The opinion of another well-known academician, Jules Claretie, is
+of the same kind.
+
+   "Dear Sir [he writes]: For a man of sense there can be but one
+   opinion on the subject of peace and war.
+
+   "Humanity is created to live, to live free, to perfect and
+   ameliorate its fate by peaceful labor.  The general harmony
+   preached by the Universal Peace Congress is but a dream
+   perhaps, but at least it is the fairest of all dreams.  Man is
+   always looking toward the Promised Land, and there the harvests
+   are to ripen with no fear of their being torn up by shells or
+   crushed by cannon wheels... But!  Ah! but----since philosophers
+   and philanthropists are not the controlling powers, it is well
+   for our soldiers to guard our frontier and homes, and their
+   arms, skillfully used, are perhaps the surest guarantee of the
+   peace we all love.
+
+   "Peace is a gift only granted to the strong and the resolute.
+
+   "I am, dear sir, etc.,
+   "JULES CLARETIE."
+
+The upshot of this letter is that there is no harm in talking
+about what no one intends or feels obliged to do.  But when it
+comes to practice, we must fight.
+
+And here now is the view lately expressed by the most popular
+novelist in Europe, Émile Zola:
+
+   "I regard war as a fatal necessity, which appears inevitable
+   for us from its close connection with human nature and the
+   whole constitution of the world.  I should wish that war could
+   be put off for the longest possible time.  Nevertheless, the
+   moment will come when we shall be forced to go to war.  I am
+   considering it at this moment from the standpoint of universal
+   humanity, and making no reference to our misunderstanding with
+   Germany--a most trivial incident in the history of mankind.  I
+   say that war is necessary and beneficial, since it seems one of
+   the conditions of existence for humanity.  War confronts us
+   everywhere, not only war between different races and peoples,
+   but war too, in private and family life.  It seems one of the
+   principal elements of progress, and every step in advance that
+   humanity has taken hitherto has been attended by bloodshed.
+
+   "Men have talked, and still talk, of disarmament, while
+   disarmament is something impossible, to which, even if it were
+   possible, we ought not to consent.  I am convinced that a
+   general disarmament throughout the world would involve
+   something like a moral decadence, which would show itself in
+   general feebleness, and would hinder the progressive
+   advancement of humanity.  A warlike nation has always been
+   strong and flourishing.  The art of war has led to the
+   development of all the other arts.  History bears witness to
+   it.  So in Athens and in Rome, commerce, manufactures, and
+   literature never attained so high a point of development as
+   when those cities were masters of the whole world by force of
+   arms.  To take an example from times nearer our own, we may
+   recall the age of Louis XIV.  The wars of the Grand Monarque
+   were not only no hindrance to the progress of the arts and
+   sciences, but even, on the contrary, seem to have promoted and
+   favored their development."
+
+So war is a beneficial thing!
+
+But the best expression of this attitude is the view of the most
+gifted of the writers of this school, the academician de Vogüé.
+This is what he writes in an article on the Military Section of
+the Exhibition of 1889:
+
+   "On the Esplanade des Invalides, among the exotic and colonial
+   encampments, a building in a more severe style overawes the
+   picturesque bazaar; all these fragments of the globe have come
+   to gather round the Palace of War, and in turn our guests mount
+   guard submissively before the mother building, but for whom
+   they would not be here.  Fine subject for the antithesis of
+   rhetoric, of humanitarians who could not fail to whimper over
+   this juxtaposition, and to say that 'CECI TUERA CELA,'
+   [footnote: Phrase quoted from Victor-Hugo, "Notre-Dame de
+   Paris."] that the union of the nations through science and
+   labor will overcome the instinct of war.  Let us leave them to
+   cherish the chimera of a golden age, which would soon become,
+   if it could be realized, an age of mud.  All history teaches us
+   that the one is created for the other, that blood is needed to
+   hasten and cement the union of the nations.  Natural science
+   has ratified in our day the mysterious law revealed to Joseph
+   de Maistre by the intuition of his genius and by meditation on
+   fundamental truths; he saw the world redeeming itself from
+   hereditary degenerations by sacrifice; science shows it
+   advancing to perfection through struggle and violent selection;
+   there is the statement of the same law in both, expressed in
+   different formulas.  The statement is disagreeable, no doubt;
+   but the laws of the world are not made for our pleasure, they
+   are made for our progress.  Let us enter this inevitable,
+   necessary palace of war; we shall be able to observe there how
+   the most tenacious of our instincts, without losing any of its
+   vigor, is transformed and adapted to the varying exigencies of
+   historical epochs."
+
+M. de Vogüé finds the necessity for war, according to his views,
+well expressed by the two great writers, Joseph de Maistre and
+Darwin, whose statements he likes so much that he quotes them
+again.
+
+   "Dear Sir [he writes to the editor of the REVUE DES REVUES]:
+   You ask me my view as to the possible success of the Universal
+   Congress of Peace.  I hold with Darwin that violent struggle is
+   a law of nature which overrules all other laws; I hold with
+   Joseph de Maistre that it is a divine law; two different ways
+   of describing the same thing.  If by some impossible chance a
+   fraction of human society--all the civilized West, let us
+   suppose--were to succeed in suspending the action of this law,
+   some races of stronger instincts would undertake the task of
+   putting it into action against us: those races would vindicate
+   nature's reasoning against human reason; they would be
+   successful, because the certainty of peace--I do not say PEACE,
+   I say the CERTAINTY OF PEACE--would, in half a century,
+   engender a corruption and a decadence more destructive for
+   mankind than the worst of wars.  I believe that we must do with
+   war--the criminal law of humanity--as with all our criminal
+   laws, that is, soften them, put them in force as rarely as
+   possible; use every effort to make their application
+   unnecessary.  But all the experience of history teaches us that
+   they cannot be altogether suppressed so long as two men are
+   left on earth, with bread, money, and a woman between them.
+
+   "I should be very happy if the Congress would prove me in
+   error. But I doubt if it can prove history, nature, and God in
+   error also.
+
+   "I am, dear sir, etc.
+   "E. M. DE VOGÜÉ."
+
+This amounts to saying that history, human nature, and God show us that
+so long as there are two men, and bread, money and a woman--there will
+be war. That is to say that no progress will lead men to rise above the
+savage conception of life, which regards no participation of bread,
+money (money is good in this context) and woman possible without
+fighting.
+
+They are strange people, these men who assemble in Congresses, and
+make speeches to show us how to catch birds by putting salt on
+their tails, though they must know it is impossible to do it.  And
+amazing are they too, who, like Maupassant, Rod, and many others,
+see clearly all the horror of war, all the inconsistency of men
+not doing what is needful, right, and beneficial for them to do;
+who lament over the tragedy of life, and do not see that the whole
+tragedy is at an end directly men, ceasing to take account of any
+unnecessary considerations, refuse to do what is hateful and
+disastrous to them.  They are amazing people truly, but those who,
+like De Vogüé and others, who, professing the doctrine of
+evolution, regard war as not only inevitable, but beneficial and
+therefore desirable--they are terrible, hideous, in their moral
+perversion.  The others, at least, say that they hate evil, and
+love good, but these openly declare that good and evil do not
+exist.
+
+All discussion of the possibility of re-establishing peace instead
+of everlasting war--is the pernicious sentimentality of
+phrasemongers.  There is a law of evolution by which it follows
+that I must live and act in an evil way; what is to be done?  I am
+an educated man, I know the law of evolution, and therefore I will
+act in an evil way.  "ENTRONS AU PALAIS DE LA GUERRE."  There is
+the law of evolution, and therefore there is neither good nor
+evil, and one must live for the sake of one's personal existence,
+leaving the rest to the action of the law of evolution.  This is
+the last word of refined culture, and with it, of that
+overshadowing of conscience which has come upon the educated
+classes of our times.  The desire of the educated classes to
+support the ideas they prefer, and the order of existence based on
+them, has attained its furthest limits. They lie, and delude
+themselves, and one another, with the subtlest forms of deception,
+simply to obscure, to deaden conscience.
+
+Instead of transforming their life into harmony with their
+conscience, they try by every means to stifle its voice.  But
+it is in darkness that the light begins to shine, and so the
+light is rising upon our epoch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SIGNIFICANCE OF COMPULSORY SERVICE.
+
+Universal Compulsory Service is not a Political Accident, but the
+Furthest Limit of the Contradiction Inherent in the Social Conception of
+Life--Origin of Authority in Society--Basis of Authority is Physical
+Violence--To be Able to Perform its Acts of Violence Authority Needs a
+Special Organization--The Army--Authority, that is, Violence, is the
+Principle which is Destroying the Social Conception of Life--Attitude of
+Authority to the Masses, that is, Attitude of Government to Working
+Oppressed Classes--Governments Try to Foster in Working Classes the Idea
+that State Force is Necessary to Defend Them from External Enemies--But
+the Army is Principally Needed to Preserve Government from its own
+Subjects--The Working Classes--Speech of M. de Caprivi--All Privileges
+of Ruling Classes Based on Violence--The Increase of Armies up to Point
+of Universal Service--Universal Compulsory Service Destroys all the
+Advantages of Social Life, which Government is Intended to
+Preserve--Compulsory Service is the Furthest Limit of Submission, since
+in Name of the State it Requires Sacrifice of all that can be Precious
+to a Man--Is Government Necessary?--The Sacrifices Demanded by
+Government in Compulsory Service have No Longer any Reasonable
+Basis--And there is More Advantage to be Gained by not Submitting to the
+Demands of the State than by Submitting to Them.
+
+
+Educated people of the upper classes are trying to stifle the
+ever-growing sense of the necessity of transforming the existing
+social order.  But life, which goes on growing more complex, and
+developing in the same direction, and increases the
+inconsistencies and the sufferings of men, brings them to the
+limit beyond which they cannot go.  This furthest limit of
+inconsistency is universal compulsory military service.
+
+It is usually supposed that universal military service and the
+increased armaments connected with it, as well as the resulting
+increase of taxes and national debts, are a passing phenomenon,
+produced by the particular political situation of Europe, and that
+it may be removed by certain political combinations without any
+modification of the inner order of life.
+
+This is absolutely incorrect.  Universal military service is only
+the internal inconsistency inherent in the social conception of
+life, carried to its furthest limits, and becoming evident when a
+certain stage of material development is reached.
+
+The social conception of life, we have seen, consists in the
+transfer of the aim of life from the individual to groups and
+their maintenance--to the tribe, family, race, or state.
+
+In the social conception of life it is supposed that since the aim
+of life is found in groups of individuals, individuals will
+voluntarily sacrifice their own interests for the interests of the
+group.  And so it has been, and still is, in fact, in certain
+groups, the distinction being that they are the most primitive
+forms of association in the family or tribe or race, or even in
+the patriarchal state.  Through tradition handed down by education
+and supported by religious sentiment, individuals without
+compulsion merged their interests in the interest of the group and
+sacrificed their own good for the general welfare.
+
+But the more complex and the larger societies become, and
+especially the more often conquest becomes the cause of the
+amalgamation of people into a state, the more often individuals
+strive to attain their own aims at the public expense, and the
+more often it becomes necessary to restrain these insubordinate
+individuals by recourse to authority, that is, to violence.  The
+champions of the social conception of life usually try to connect
+the idea of authority, that is, of violence, with the idea of
+moral influence, but this connection is quite impossible.
+
+The effect of moral influence on a man is to change his desires
+and to bend them in the direction of the duty required of him.
+The man who is controlled by moral influence acts in accordance
+with his own desires.  Authority, in the sense in which the word
+is ordinarily understood, is a means of forcing a man to act in
+opposition to his desires.  The man who submits to authority does
+not do as he chooses but as he is obliged by authority.  Nothing
+can oblige a man to do what he does not choose except physical
+force, or the threat of it, that is--deprivation of freedom,
+blows, imprisonment, or threats--easily carried out--of such
+punishments.  This is what authority consists of and always has
+consisted of.
+
+In spite of the unceasing efforts of those who happen to be in authority
+to conceal this and attribute some other significance to it, authority
+has always meant for man the cord, the chain with which he is bound and
+fettered, or the knout with which he is to be flogged, or the ax with
+which he is to have hands, ears, nose, or head cut off, or at the very
+least, the threat of these terrors. So it was under Nero and Ghenghis
+Khan, and so it is to-day, even under the most liberal government in the
+Republics of the United States or of France. If men submit to authority,
+it is only because they are liable to these punishments in case of
+non-submission. All state obligations, payment of taxes, fulfillment of
+state duties, and submission to punishments, exile, fines, etc., to
+which people appear to submit voluntarily, are always based on bodily
+violence or the threat of it.
+
+The basis of authority is bodily violence. The possibility of
+applying bodily violence to people is provided above all by an
+organization of armed men, trained to act in unison in submission
+to one will.  These bands of armed men, submissive to a single
+will, are what constitute the army.  The army has always been and
+still is the basis of power.  Power is always in the hands of
+those who control the army, and all men in power--from the Roman
+Caesars to the Russian and German Emperors--take more interest in
+their army than in anything, and court popularity in the army,
+knowing that if that is on their side their power is secure.
+
+The formation and aggrandizement of the army, indispensable to the
+maintenance of authority, is what has introduced into the social
+conception of life the principle that is destroying it.
+
+The object of authority and the justification for its existence
+lie in the restraint of those who aim at attaining their personal
+interests to the detriment of the interests of society.
+
+But however power has been gained, those who possess it are in no
+way different from other men, and therefore no more disposed than
+others to subordinate their own interests to those of the society.
+On the contrary, having the power to do so at their disposal, they
+are more disposed than others to subordinate the public interests
+to their own.  Whatever means men have devised for preventing
+those in authority from over-riding public interests for their own
+benefit, or for intrusting power only to the most faultless
+people, they have not so far succeeded in either of those aims.
+
+All the methods of appointing authorities that have been tried,
+divine right, and election, and heredity, and balloting, and
+assemblies and parliaments and senate--have all proved
+ineffectual.  Everyone knows that not one of these methods attains
+the aim either of intrusting power only to the incorruptible, or
+of preventing power from being abused.  Everyone knows on the
+contrary that men in authority--be they emperors, ministers,
+governors, or police officers--are always, simply from the
+possession of power, more liable to be demoralized, that is, to
+subordinate public interests to their personal aims than those who
+have not the power to do so.  Indeed, it could not be otherwise.
+
+The state conception of life could be justified only so long as
+all men voluntarily sacrificed their personal interests to the
+public welfare.  But so soon as there were individuals who would
+not voluntarily sacrifice their own interests, and authority, that
+is, violence, was needed to restrain them, then the disintegrating
+principle of the coercion of one set of people by another set
+entered into the social conception of the organization based on
+it.
+
+For the authority of one set of men over another to attain its
+object of restraining those who override public interests for
+their personal ends, power ought only to be put into the hands of
+the impeccable, as it is supposed to be among the Chinese, and as
+it was supposed to be in the Middle Ages, and is even now supposed
+to be by those who believe in the consecration by anointing.  Only
+under those conditions could the social organization be justified.
+
+But since this is not the case, and on the contrary men in power
+are always far from being saints, through the very fact of their
+possession of power, the social organization based on power has no
+justification.
+
+Even if there was once a time when, owing to the low standard of
+morals, and the disposition of men to violence, the existence of
+an authority to restrain such violence was an advantage, because
+the violence of government was less than the violence of
+individuals, one cannot but see that this advantage could not be
+lasting.  As the disposition of individuals to violence
+diminished, and as the habits of the people became more civilized,
+and as power grew more social organization demoralized through
+lack of restraint, this advantage disappeared.
+
+The whole history of the last two thousand years is nothing but
+the history of this gradual change of relation between the moral
+development of the masses on the one hand and the demoralization
+of governments on the other.
+
+This, put simply, is how it has come to pass.
+
+Men lived in families, tribes, and races, at feud with one
+another, plundering, outraging, and killing one another.  These
+violent hostilities were carried on on a large and on a small
+scale: man against man, family against family, tribe against
+tribe, race against race, and people against people.  The larger
+and stronger groups conquered and absorbed the weaker, and the
+larger and stronger they became, the more internal feuds
+disappeared and the more the continuity of the group seemed
+assured.
+
+The members of a family or tribe, united into one community, are
+less hostile among themselves, and families and tribes do not die
+like one man, but have a continuity of existence.  Between the
+members of one state, subject to a single authority, the strife
+between individuals seems still less and the life of the state
+seems even more secure.
+
+Their association into larger and larger groups was not the result
+of the conscious recognition of the benefits of such associations,
+as it is said to be in the story of the Varyagi.  It was produced,
+on one hand, by the natural growth of population, and, on the
+other, by struggle and conquest.
+
+After conquest the power of the emperor puts an end to internal
+dissensions, and so the state conception of life justifies itself.
+But this justification is never more than temporary.  Internal
+dissensions disappear only in proportion to the degree of
+oppression exerted by the authority over the dissentient
+individuals.  The violence of internal feud crushed by authority
+reappears in authority itself, which falls into the hands of men
+who, like the rest, are frequently or always ready to sacrifice
+the public welfare to their personal interest, with the difference
+that their subjects cannot resist them, and thus they are exposed
+to all the demoralizing influence of authority.  And thus the evil
+of violence, when it passes into the hands of authority, is always
+growing and growing, and in time becomes greater than the evil it
+is supposed to suppress, while, at the same time, the tendency to
+violence in the members of the society becomes weaker and weaker,
+so that the violence of authority is less and less needed.
+
+Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence,
+always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence,
+which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the
+duration and strength of the government.
+
+So that though the violence of power is less noticeable in
+government than when it is employed by members of society against
+one another, because it finds expression in submission, and not in
+strife, it nevertheless exists, and often to a greater degree than
+in former days.
+
+And it could not be otherwise, since, apart from the demoralizing
+influence of power, the policy or even the unconscious tendency of
+those in power will always be to reduce their subjects to the
+extreme of weakness, for the weaker the oppressed, the less effort
+need be made to keep him in subjection.
+
+And therefore the oppression of the oppressed always goes on
+growing up to the furthest limit, beyond which it cannot go
+without killing the goose with the golden eggs.  And if the goose
+lays no more eggs, like the American Indians, negroes, and
+Fijians, then it is killed in spite of the sincere protests of
+philanthropists.
+
+The most convincing example of this is to be found in the
+condition of the working classes of our epoch, who are in reality
+no better than the slaves of ancient times subdued by conquest.
+
+In spite of the pretended efforts of the higher classes to
+ameliorate the position of the workers, all the working classes of
+the present day are kept down by the inflexible iron law by which
+they only get just what is barely necessary, so that they are
+forced to work without ceasing while still retaining strength
+enough to labor for their employers, who are really those who have
+conquered and enslaved them.
+
+So it has always been.  In ratio to the duration and increasing
+strength of authority its advantages for its subjects disappear
+and its disadvantages increase.
+
+And this has been so, independently of the forms of government
+under which nations have lived. The only difference is that under
+a despotic form of government the authority is concentrated in a
+small number of oppressors and violence takes a cruder form; under
+constitutional monarchies and republics as in France and America
+authority is divided among a great number of oppressors and the
+forms assumed by violence is less crude, but its effect of making
+the disadvantages of authority greater than its advantages, and of
+enfeebling the oppressed to the furthest extreme to which they can
+be reduced with advantage to the oppressors, remains always the
+same.
+
+Such has been and still is the condition of all the oppressed, but
+hitherto they have not recognized the fact. In the majority of instances
+they have believed in all simplicity that governments exist for their
+benefit; that they would be lost without a government; that the very
+idea of living without a government is a blasphemy which one hardly dare
+put into words; that this is the--for some reason terrible--doctrine of
+anarchism, with which a mental picture of all kinds of horrors is
+associated.
+
+People have believed, as though it were something fully proved,
+and so needing no proof, that since all nations have hitherto
+developed in the form of states, that form of organization is an
+indispensable condition of the development of humanity.
+
+And in that way it has lasted for hundreds and thousands of years,
+and governments--those who happened to be in power--have tried it,
+and are now trying more zealously than ever to keep their subjects
+in this error.
+
+So it was under the Roman emperors and so it is now.  In spite of
+the fact that the sense of the uselessness and even injurious
+effects of state violence is more and more penetrating into men's
+consciousness, things might have gone on in the same way forever
+if governments were not under the necessity of constantly
+increasing their armies in order to maintain their power.
+
+It is generally supposed that governments strengthen their forces
+only to defend the state from other states, in oblivion of the
+fact that armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense
+of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.
+
+That has always been necessary, and has become more and more
+necessary with the increased diffusion of education among the
+masses, with the improved communication between people of the same
+and of different nationalities.  It has become particularly
+indispensable now in the face of communism, socialism, anarchism,
+and the labor movement generally.  Governments feel that it is so,
+and strengthen the force of their disciplined armies. [See
+Footnote]
+
+    [Footnote: The fact that in America the abuses of
+    authority exist in spite of the small number of their
+    troops not only fails to disprove this position,
+    but positively confirms it.  In America there are
+    fewer soldiers than in other states.  That is why
+    there is nowhere else so little oppression of the
+    working classes, and no country where the end of the
+    abuses of government and of government itself seems
+    so near.  Of late as the combinations of laborers
+    gain in strength, one hears more and more frequently
+    the cry raised for the increase of the army, though
+    the United States are not threatened with any attack
+    from without.  The upper classes know that an army of
+    fifty thousand will soon be insufficient, and no longer
+    relying on Pinkerton's men, they feel that the security
+    of their position depends on the increased strength of
+    the army.]
+
+
+In the German Reichstag not long ago, in reply to a question why funds
+were needed for raising the salaries of the under-officers, the German
+Chancellor openly declared that trustworthy under-officers were
+necessary to contend against socialism. Caprivi only said aloud what
+every statesman knows and assiduously conceals from the people. The
+reason to which he gave expression is essentially the same as that which
+made the French kings and the popes engage Swiss and Scotch guards, and
+makes the Russian authorities of to-day so carefully distribute the
+recruits, so that the regiments from the frontiers are stationed in
+central districts, and the regiments from the center are stationed on
+the frontiers. The meaning of Caprivi's speech, put into plain language,
+is that funds are needed, not to resist foreign foes, but to BUY
+UNDER-OFFICERS to be ready to act against the enslaved toiling masses.
+
+Caprivi incautiously gave utterance to what everyone knows
+perfectly well, or at least feels vaguely if he does not recognize
+it, that is, that the existing order of life is as it is, not, as
+would be natural and right, because the people wish it to be so,
+but because it is so maintained by state violence, by the army
+with its BOUGHT UNDER-OFFICERS and generals.
+
+If the laborer has no land, if he cannot use the natural right of
+every man to derive subsistence for himself and his family out of
+the land, that is not because the people wish it to be so, but
+because a certain set of men, the land-owners, have appropriated
+the right of giving or refusing admittance to the land to the
+laborers.  And this abnormal order of things is maintained by the
+army.  If the immense wealth produced by the labor of the working
+classes is not regarded as the property of all, but as the
+property of a few exceptional persons; if labor is taxed by
+authority and the taxes spent by a few on what they think fit; if
+strikes on the part of laborers are repressesd, while on the part
+of capitalists they are encouraged; if certain persons appropriate
+the right of choosing the form of the education, religious and
+secular, of children, and certain persons monopolize the right of
+making the laws all must obey, and so dispose of the lives and
+properties of other people--all this is not done because the
+people wish it and because it is what is natural and right, but
+because the government and ruling classes wish this to be so for
+their own benefit, and insist on its being so even by physical
+violence.
+
+Everyone, if he does not recognize this now, will know that it is
+so at the first attempt at insubordination or at a revolution of
+the existing order.
+
+Armies, then, are needed by governments and by the ruling classes
+above all to support the present order, which, far from being the
+result of the people's needs, is often in direct antagonism to
+them, and is only beneficial to the government and ruling classes.
+
+To keep their subjects in oppression and to be able to enjoy the
+fruits of their labor the government must have armed forces.
+
+But there is not only one government.  There are other
+governments, exploiting their subjects by violence in the same
+way, and always ready to pounce down on any other government and
+carry off the fruits of the toil of its enslaved subjects.  And so
+every government needs an army also to protect its booty from its
+neighbor brigands.  Every government is thus involuntarily reduced
+to the necessity of emulating one another in the increase of their
+armies.  This increase is contagious, as Montesquieu pointed out
+150 years ago.
+
+Every increase in the army of one state, with the aim of
+self-defense against its subjects, becomes a source of danger for
+neighboring states and calls for a similar increase in their
+armies.
+
+The armed forces have reached their present number of millions not
+only through the menace of danger from neighboring states, but
+principally through the necessity of subduing every effort at
+revolt on the part of the subjects.
+
+Both causes, mutually dependent, contribute to the same result at
+once; troops are required against internal forces and also to keep
+up a position with other states.  One is the result of the other.
+The despotism of a government always increases with the strength
+of the army and its external successes, and the aggressiveness of
+a government increases with its internal despotism.
+
+The rivalry of the European states in constantly increasing their
+forces has reduced them to the necessity of having recourse to
+universal military service, since by that means the greatest
+possible number of soldiers is obtained at the least possible
+expense.  Germany first hit on this device.  And directly one
+state adopted it the others were obliged to do the same.  And by
+this means all citizens are under arms to support the iniquities
+practiced upon them; all citizens have become their own
+oppressors.
+
+Universal military service was an inevitable logical necessity, to
+which we were bound to come.  But it is also the last expression
+of the inconsistency inherent in the social conception of life,
+when violence is needed to maintain it.  This inconsistency has
+become obvious in universal military service.  In fact, the whole
+significance of the social conception of life consists in man's
+recognition of the barbarity of strife between individuals, and
+the transitoriness of personal life itself, and the transference
+of the aim of life to groups of persons.  But with universal
+military service it comes to pass that men, after making every
+sacrifice to get rid of the cruelty of strife and the insecurity
+of existence, are called upon to face all the perils they had
+meant to avoid.  And in addition to this the state, for whose sake
+individuals renounced their personal advantages, is exposed again
+to the same risks of insecurity and lack of permanence as the
+individual himself was in previous times.
+
+Governments were to give men freedom from the cruelty of personal
+strife and security in the permanence of the state order of
+existence.  But instead of doing that they expose the individuals
+to the same necessity of strife, substituting strife with
+individuals of other states for strife with neighbors.  And the
+danger of destruction for the individual, and the state too, they
+leave just as it was.
+
+Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man
+to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with
+props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to
+keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in
+it.
+
+In the same way universal military service destroys all the
+benefits of the social order of life which it is employed to
+maintain.
+
+The advantages of social organization are security of property and labor
+and associated action for the improvement of existence--universal
+military service destroys all this.
+
+The taxes raised from the people for war preparations absorb the greater
+part of the produce of labor which the army ought to defend.
+
+The withdrawing of all men from the ordinary course of life
+destroys the possibility of labor itself. The danger of war, ever
+ready to break out, renders all reforms of life social life vain
+and fruitless.
+
+In former days if a man were told that if he did not acknowledge
+the authority of the state, he would be exposed to attack from
+enemies domestic and foreign, that he would have to resist them
+alone, and would be liable to be killed, and that therefore it
+would be to his advantage to put up with some hardships to secure
+himself from these calamities, he might well believe it, seeing
+that the sacrifices he made to the state were only partial and
+gave him the hope of a tranquil existence in a permanent state.
+But now, when the sacrifices have been increased tenfold and
+the promised advantages are disappearing, it would be a natural
+reflection that submission to authority is absolutely useless.
+
+But the fatal significance of universal military service, as the
+manifestation of the contradiction inherent in the social
+conception of life, is not only apparent in that.  The greatest
+manifestation of this contradiction consists in the fact that
+every citizen in being made a soldier becomes a prop of the
+government organization, and shares the responsibility of
+everything the government does, even though he may not admit its
+legitimacy.
+
+Governments assert that armies are needed above all for external
+defense, but that is not true.  They are needed principally
+against their subjects, and every man, under universal military
+service, becomes an accomplice in all the acts of violence of the
+government against the citizens without any choice of his own.
+
+To convince oneself of this one need only remember what things are
+done in every state, in the name of order and the public welfare,
+of which the execution always falls to the army.  All civil
+outbreaks for dynastic or other party reasons, all the executions
+that follow on such disturbances, all repression of insurrections,
+and military intervention to break up meetings and to suppress
+strikes, all forced extortion of taxes, all the iniquitous
+distributions of land, all the restrictions on labor--are either
+carried out directly by the military or by the police with the
+army at their back.  Anyone who serves his time in the army shares
+the responsibility of all these things, about which he is, in some
+cases, dubious, while very often they are directly opposed to his
+conscience.  People are unwilling to be turned out of the land
+they have cultivated for generations, or they are unwilling to
+disperse when the government authority orders them, or they are
+unwilling to pay the taxes required of them, or to recognize laws
+as binding on them when they have had no hand in making them, or
+to be deprived of their nationality--and I, in the fulfillment of
+my military duty, must go and shoot them for it.  How can I help
+asking myself when I take part in such punishments, whether they
+are just, and whether I ought to assist in carrying them out?
+
+Universal service is the extreme limit of violence necessary for
+the support of the whole state organization, and it is the extreme
+limit to which submission on the part of the subjects can go.  It
+is the keystone of the whole edifice, and its fall will bring it
+all down.
+
+The time has come when the ever-growing abuse of power by governments
+and their struggles with one another has led to their demanding such
+material and even moral sacrifices from their subjects that everyone is
+forced to reflect and ask himself, "Can I make these sacrifices? And for
+the sake of what am I making them? I am expected for the sake of the
+state to make these sacrifices, to renounce everything that can be
+precious to man--peace, family, security, and human dignity." What is
+this state, for whose sake such terrible sacrifices have to be made? And
+why is it so indispensably necessary? "The state," they tell us, "is
+indispensably needed, in the first place, because without it we should
+not be protected against the attacks of evil-disposed persons; and
+secondly, except for the state we should be savages and should have
+neither religion, culture, education, nor commerce, nor means of
+communication, nor other social institutions; and thirdly, without the
+state to defend us we should be liable to be conquered and enslaved by
+neighboring peoples."
+
+"Except for the state," they say, "we should be exposed to the
+attacks of evil-disposed persons in our own country."
+
+But who are these evil-disposed persons in our midst from whose attacks
+we are preserved by the state and its army? Even if, three or four
+centuries ago, when men prided themselves on their warlike prowess, when
+killing men was considered an heroic achievement, there were such
+persons; we know very well that there are no such persons now, that we
+do not nowadays carry or use firearms, but everyone professes humane
+principles and feels sympathy for his fellows, and wants nothing more
+than we all do--that is, to be left in peace to enjoy his existence
+undisturbed. So that nowadays there are no special malefactors from whom
+the state could defend us. If by these evil disposed persons is meant
+the men who are punished as criminals, we know very well that they are
+not a different kind of being like wild beasts among sheep, but are men
+just like ourselves, and no more naturally inclined to crimes than those
+against whom they commit them. We know now that threats and punishments
+cannot diminish their number; that that can only be done by change of
+environment and moral influence. So that the justification of state
+violence on the ground of the protection it gives us from evil-disposed
+persons, even if it had some foundation three or four centuries ago, has
+none whatever now. At present one would rather say on the contrary that
+the action of the state with its cruel methods of punishment, behind the
+general moral standard of the age, such as prisons, galleys, gibbets,
+and guillotines, tends rather to brutalize the people than to civilize
+them, and consequently rather to increase than diminish the number of
+malefactors.
+
+"Except for the state," they tell us, "we should not have any
+religion, education, culture, means of communication, and so on.
+Without the state men would not have been able to form the social
+institutions needed for doing any thing."  This argument too was
+well founded only some centuries ago.
+
+If there was a time when people were so disunited, when they had
+so little means of communication and interchange of ideas, that
+they could not co-operate and agree together in any common action
+in commerce, economics, or education without the state as a
+center, this want of common action exists no longer.  The great
+extension of means of communication and interchange of ideas has
+made men completely able to dispense with state aid in forming
+societies, associations, corporations, and congresses for
+scientific, economic, and political objects.  Indeed government is
+more often an obstacle than an assistance in attaining these aims.
+
+From the end of last century there has hardly been a single
+progressive movement of humanity which has not been retarded by
+the government.  So it has been with abolition of corporal
+punishment, of trial by torture, and of slavery, as well as with
+the establishment of the liberty of the press and the right of
+public meeting.  In our day governments not only fail to
+encourage, but directly hinder every movement by which people try
+to work out new forms of life for themselves.  Every attempt at
+the solution of the problems of labor, land, politics, and
+religion meets with direct opposition on the part of government.
+
+"Without governments nations would be enslaved by their
+neighbors."  It is scarcely necessary to refute this last
+argument.  It carries its refutation on the face of it.  The
+government, they tell us, with its army, is necessary to defend us
+from neighboring states who might enslave us.  But we know this is
+what all governments say of one another, and yet we know that all
+the European nations profess the same principles of liberty and
+fraternity, and therefore stand in no need of protection against
+one another.  And if defense against barbarous nations is meant,
+one-thousandth part of the troops now under arms would be amply
+sufficient for that purpose.  We see that it is really the very
+opposite of what we have been told.  The power of the state, far
+from being a security against the attacks of our neighbors,
+exposes us, on the contrary, to much greater danger of such
+attacks.  So that every man who is led, through his compulsory
+service in the army, to reflect on the value of the state for
+whose sake he is expected to be ready to sacrifice his peace,
+security, and life, cannot fail to perceive that there is no kind
+of justification in modern times for such a sacrifice.
+
+And it is not only from the theoretical standpoint that every man
+must see that the sacrifices demanded by the state have no
+justification.  Even looking at it practically, weighing, that is
+to say, all the burdens laid on him by the state, no man can fail
+to see that for him personally to comply with state demands and
+serve in the army, would, in the majority of cases, be more
+disadvantageous than to refuse to do so.
+
+If the majority of men choose to submit rather than to refuse, it
+is not the result of sober balancing of advantages and
+disadvantages, but because they are induced by a kind of
+hypnotizing process practiced upon them.  In submitting they
+simply yield to the suggestions given them as orders, without
+thought or effort of will.  To resist would need independent
+thought and effort of which every man is not capable.  Even apart
+from the moral significance of compliance or non-compliance,
+considering material advantage only, non-compliance will be more
+advantageous in general.
+
+Whoever I may be, whether I belong to the well-to-do class of the
+oppressors, or the working class of the oppressed, in either case
+the disadvantages of non-compliance are less and its advantages
+greater than those of compliance.  If I belong to the minority of
+oppressors the disadvantages of non-compliance will consist in my
+being brought to judgment for refusing to perform my duties to the
+state, and if I am lucky, being acquitted or, as is done in the
+case of the Mennonites in Russia, being set to work out my
+military service at some civil occupation for the state; while if
+I am unlucky, I may be condemned to exile or imprisonment for two
+or three years (I judge by the cases that have occurred in
+Russia), possibly to even longer imprisonment, or possibly to
+death, though the probability of that latter is very remote.
+
+So much for the disadvantages of non-compliance.  The
+disadvantages of compliance will be as follows: if I am lucky I
+shall not be sent to murder my fellow-creatures, and shall not be
+exposed to great danger of being maimed and killed, but shall only
+be enrolled into military slavery.  I shall be dressed up like a
+clown, I shall be at the beck and call of every man of a higher
+grade than my own from corporal to field-marshal, shall be put
+through any bodily contortions at their pleasure, and after being
+kept from one to five years I shall have for ten years afterward
+to be in readiness to undertake all of it again at any minute.  If
+I am unlucky I may, in addition, be sent to war, where I shall be
+forced to kill men of foreign nations who have done me no harm,
+where I may be maimed or killed, or sent to certain destruction as
+in the case of the garrison of Sevastopol, and other cases in
+every war, or what would be most terrible of all, I may be sent
+against my own compatriots and have to kill my own brothers for
+some dynastic or other state interests which have absolutely
+nothing to do with me.  So much for the comparative disadvantages.
+
+The comparative advantages of compliance and non-compliance are as
+follows:
+
+For the man who submits, the advantages will be that, after
+exposing himself to all the humiliation and performing all the
+barbarities required of him, he may, if he escapes being killed,
+get a decoration of red or gold tinsel to stick on his clown's
+dress; he may, if he is very lucky, be put in command of hundreds
+of thousands of others as brutalized as himself; be called a
+field-marshal, and get a lot of money.
+
+The advantages of the man who refuses to obey will consist in
+preserving his dignity as a man, gaining the approbation of good
+men, and above all knowing that he is doing the work of God, and
+so undoubtedly doing good to his fellow-men.
+
+So much for the advantages and disadvantages of both lines of
+conduct for a man of the wealthy classes, an oppressor.  For a man
+of the poor working class the advantages and disadvantages will be
+the same, but with a great increase of disadvantages.  The
+disadvantages for the poor man who submits will be aggravated by
+the fact that he will by taking part in it, and, as it were,
+assenting to it strengthen the state of subjection in which he is
+held himself.
+
+But no considerations as to how far the state is useful or
+beneficial to the men who help to support it by serving in the
+army, nor of the advantages or disadvantages for the individual of
+compliance or non-compliance with state demands, will decide the
+question of the continued existence or the abolition of
+government.  This question will be finally decided beyond appeal
+by the religious consciousness or conscience of every man who is
+forced, whether he will or no, through universal conscription, to
+face the question whether the state is to continue to exist or
+not.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE MUST INEVITABLY BE
+ACCEPTED BY MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY.
+
+Christianity is Not a System of Rules, but a New Conception of
+Life, and therefore it was Not Obligatory and was Not Accepted
+in its True Significance by All, but only by a Few--Christianity
+is, Moreover, Prophetic of the Destruction of the Pagan Life,
+and therefore of Necessity of the Acceptance of the Christian
+Doctrines--Non-resistance of Evil by Force is One Aspect of the
+Christian Doctrine, which must Inevitably in Our Times be
+Accepted by Men--Two Methods of Deciding Every Quarrel--First
+Method is to Find a Universal Definition of Evil, which All Must
+Accept, and to Resist this Evil by Force--Second Method is the
+Christian One of Complete Non-resistance by Force--Though the
+Failure of the First Method was Recognized since the Early Days of
+Christianity, it was Still Proposed, and only as Mankind has
+Progressed it has Become More and More Evident that there Cannot
+be any Universal Definition of Evil--This is Recognized by All at
+the Present Day, and if Force is Still Used to Resist Evil, it is
+Not Because it is Now Regarded as Right, but Because People Don't
+Know How to Avoid It--The Difficulty of Avoiding It is the Result
+of the Subtle and Complex Character of the Government Use of
+Force--Force is Used in Four Ways: Intimidation, Bribery,
+Hypnotism, and Coercion by Force of Arms--State Violence Can Never
+be Suppressed by the Forcible Overthrow of the Government--Men are
+Led by the Sufferings of the Pagan Mode of Life to the Necessity
+of Accepting Christ's Teaching with its Doctrine of Non-resistance
+by Force--The Consciousness of its Truth which is Diffused
+Throughout Our Society, Will also Bring About its Acceptance--This
+Consciousness is in Complete Contradiction with Our Life--This is
+Specially Obvious in Compulsory Military Service, but Through
+Habit and the Application of the Four Methods of Violence by the
+State, Men do not See this Inconsistency of Christianity with Life
+of a Soldier--They do Not even See It, though the Authorities
+Themselves Show all the Immorality of a Soldier's Duties with
+Perfect Clearness--The Call to Military Service is the Supreme
+Test for Every Man, when the Choice is Offered Him, between
+Adopting the Christian Doctrine of Non-resistance, or Slavishly
+Submitting to the Existing State Organization--Men Usually
+Renounce All They Hold Sacred, and Submit to the Demands of
+Government, Seeming to See No Other Course Open to Them--For Men
+of the Pagan Conception of Life there is No Other Course Open, and
+Never Will Be, in Spite of the Growing Horrors of War--Society,
+Made Up of Such Men, Must Perish, and No Social Reorganization Can
+Save It--Pagan Life Has Reached Its Extreme Limit, and Will
+Annihilate Itself.
+
+
+It is often said that if Christianity is a truth, it ought to have
+been accepted by everyone directly it appeared, and ought to have
+transformed men's lives for the better.  But this is like saying
+that if the seed were ripe it ought at once to bring forth stalls,
+flower, and fruit.
+
+The Christian religion is not a legal system which, being imposed
+by violence, may transform men's lives.  Christianity is a new and
+higher conception of life.  A new conception of life cannot be
+imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated.  And it can
+only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and
+internal, the other experimental and external.
+
+Some people--a minority--by a kind of prophetic instinct divine
+the truth of the doctrine, surrender themselves to it and adopt
+it.  Others--the majority--only through a long course of mistakes,
+experiments, and suffering are brought to recognize the truth of
+the doctrine and the necessity of adopting it.
+
+And by this experimental external method the majority of Christian
+men have now been brought to this necessity of assimilating the
+doctrine.  One sometimes wonders what necessitated the corruption
+of Christianity which is now the greatest obstacle to its
+acceptance in its true significance.
+
+If Christianity had been presented to men in its true, uncorrupted
+form, it would not have been accepted by the majority, who would
+have been as untouched by it as the nations of Asia are now.  The
+peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its
+slow but certain influence, and by a long course of errors and
+experiments and their resultant sufferings have now been brought
+to the necessity of assimilating it in its true significance.
+
+The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupt
+form by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the
+seed should remain hidden for a certain time in the earth in order
+to germinate.
+
+Christianity is at once a doctrine of truth and a prophecy.
+Eighteen centuries ago Christianity revealed to men the truth in
+which they ought to live, and at the same time foretold what human
+life would become if men would not live by it but continued to
+live by their previous principles, and what it would become if
+they accepted the Christian doctrine and carried it out in their
+lives.
+
+Laying down in the Sermon on the Mount the principles by which to
+guide men's lives, Christ said: "Whosoever heareth these sayings
+of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who
+built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the
+floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it
+fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.  And everyone that
+heareth these sayings, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
+foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain
+descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon
+that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it" (Matt. vii.
+24-27).
+
+And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled.
+Not having followed Christ's teaching generally and its
+application to social life in non-resistance to evil, men have
+been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction
+foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfill his teaching.
+
+People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force
+is a theoretical one, which can be neglected.  Yet this question
+is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer
+from every thinking man.  Ever since Christianity has been
+outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life
+like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the
+road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
+He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but
+will go on just as I did before.  There was one road, now there
+are two, and he must make his choice.
+
+In the same way since Christ's teaching has been known by men they
+cannot say: I will live as before and will not decide the question
+of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force.  At every new
+struggle that arises one must inevitably decide; am I, or am I
+not, to resist by force what I regard as evil.
+
+The question of resistance or non-resistance to evil arose when
+the first conflict between men took place, since every conflict is
+nothing else than resistance by force to what each of the
+combatants regards as evil.  But before Christ, men did not see
+that resistance by force to what each regards as evil, simply
+because one thinks evil what the other thinks good, is only one of
+the methods of settling the dispute, and that there is another
+method, that of not resisting evil by force at all.
+
+Before Christ's teaching, it seemed to men that the one only means
+of settling a dispute was by resistance to evil by force.  And
+they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convince
+himself and others that what each respectively regards as evil, is
+actually, absolutely evil.
+
+And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions
+of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone.  And such
+definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to
+have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the
+commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was
+attributed.  Men resorted to violence against others, and
+convinced themselves and others that they were directing their
+violence against evil recognized as such by all.
+
+This means was employed from the earliest times, especially by
+those who had gained possession of authority, and for a long while
+its irrationality was not detected.
+
+But the longer men lived in the world and the more complex their
+relations became, the more evident it was that to resist by force
+what each regarded as evil was irrational, that conflict was in no
+way lessened thereby, and that no human definitions can succeed in
+making what some regard as evil be accepted as such by others.
+
+Already at the time Christianity arose, it was evident to a great
+number of people in the Roman Empire where it arose, that what was
+regarded as evil by Nero and Caligula could not be regarded as
+evil by others.  Even at that time men had begun to understand
+that human laws, though given out for divine laws, were compiled
+by men, and cannot be infallible, whatever the external majesty
+with which they are invested, and that erring men are not rendered
+infallible by assembling together and calling themselves a senate
+or any other name.  Even at that time this was felt and understood
+by many.  And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which
+consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by
+force, but gave a new conception of life and a means of putting an
+end to conflict between all men, not by making it the duty of one
+section only of mankind to submit without conflict to what is
+prescribed to them by certain authorities, but by making it the
+duty of all--and consequently of those in authority--not to resort
+to force against anyone in any circumstances.
+
+This doctrine was accepted at the time by only a very small number
+of disciples.  The majority of men, especially all who were in
+power, even after the nominal acceptance of Christianity,
+continued to maintain for themselves the principle of resistance
+by force to what they regarded as evil.  So it was under the Roman
+and Byzantine emperors, and so it continued to be later.
+
+The insufficiency of the principle of the authoritative definition
+of evil and resistance to it by force, evident as it was in the
+early ages of Christianity, becomes still more obvious through the
+division of the Roman Empire into many states of equal authority,
+through their hostilities and the internal conflicts that broke
+out within them.
+
+But men were not ready to accept the solution given by Christ, and
+the old definitions of evil, which ought to be resisted, continued
+to be laid down by means of making laws binding on all and
+enforced by forcible means.  The authority who decided what ought
+to be regarded as evil and resisted by force was at one time the
+Pope, at another an emperor or king, an elective assembly or a
+whole nation.  But both within and without the state there were
+always men to be found who did not accept as binding on themselves
+the laws given out as the decrees of a god, or made by men
+invested with a sacred character, or the institutions supposed to
+represent the will of the nation; and there were men who thought
+good what the existing authorities regarded as bad, and who
+struggled against the authorities with the same violence as was
+employed against them.
+
+The men invested with religious authority regarded as evil what
+the men and institutions invested with temporal authority regarded
+as good and vice versa, and the struggle grew more and more
+intense.  And the longer men used violence as the means of
+settling their disputes, the more obvious it became that it was an
+unsuitable means, since there could be no external authority able
+to define evil recognized by all.
+
+Things went on like this for eighteen centuries, and at last
+reached the present position in which it is absolutely obvious
+that there is, and can be, no external definition of evil binding
+upon all.  Men have come to the point of ceasing to believe in the
+possibility or even desirability of finding and establishing such
+a general definition.  It has come to men in power ceasing to
+attempt to prove that what they regard as evil is evil, and simply
+declaring that they regard as evil what they don't like, while
+their subjects no longer obey them because they accept the
+definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they
+cannot help themselves.  It was not because it was a good thing,
+necessary and beneficial to men, and the contrary course would
+have been an evil, but simply because it was the will of those in
+power that Nice was incorporated into France, and Lorraine into
+Germany, and Bohemia into Austria, and that Poland was divided,
+and Ireland and India ruled by the English government, and that
+the Chinese are attacked and the Africans slaughtered, and the
+Chinese prevented from immigrating by the Americans, and the Jews
+persecuted by the Russians, and that landowners appropriate lands
+they do not cultivate and capitalists enjoy the fruits of the
+labor of others.  It has come to the present state of things; one
+set of men commit acts of violence no longer on the pretext of
+resistance to evil, but simply for their profit or their caprice,
+and another set submit to violence, not because they suppose, as
+was supposed in former times, that this violence was practised
+upon them for the sake of securing them from evil, but simply
+because they cannot avoid it.
+
+If the Roman, or the man of mediaeval times, or the average
+Russian of fifty years ago, as I remember him, was convinced
+without a shade of doubt that the violence of authority was
+indispensable to preserve him from evil; that taxes, dues,
+serfage, prisons, scourging, knouts, executions, the army and war
+were what ought to be--we know now that one can seldom find a man
+who believes that all these means of violence preserve anyone from
+any evil whatever, and indeed does not clearly perceive that most
+of these acts of violence to which he is exposed, and in which he
+has some share, are in themselves a great and useless evil.
+
+There is no one to-day who does not see the uselessness and injustice of
+collecting taxes from the toiling masses to enrich idle officials; or
+the senselessness of inflicting punishments on weak or depraved persons
+in the shape of transportation from one place to another, or of
+imprisonment in a fortress where, living in security and indolence, they
+only become weaker and more depraved; or the worse than uselessness and
+injustice, the positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war
+and of wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of
+justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are supported by
+the very people who see their uselessness, injustice, and cruelty, and
+suffer from them. If fifty years ago the idle rich man and the
+illiterate laborer were both alike convinced that their state of
+everlasting holiday for one and everlasting toil for the other was
+ordained by God himself, we know very well that nowadays, thanks to the
+growth of population and the diffusion of books and education, it would
+be hard to find in Europe or even in Russia, either among rich or poor,
+a man to whom in one shape or another a doubt as to the justice of this
+state of things had never presented itself. The rich know that they are
+guilty in the very fact of being rich, and try to expiate their guilt by
+sacrifices to art and science, as of old they expiated their sins by
+sacrifices to the Church. And even the larger half of the working people
+openly declare that the existing order is iniquitous and bound to be
+destroyed or reformed. One set of religious people of whom there are
+millions in Russia, the so-called sectaries, consider the existing
+social order as unjust and to be destroyed on the ground of the Gospel
+teaching taken in its true sense. Others regard it as unjust on the
+ground of the socialistic, communistic, or anarchistic theories, which
+are springing up in the lower strata of the working people. Violence no
+longer rests on the belief in its utility, but only on the fact of its
+having existed so long, and being organized by the ruling classes who
+profit by it, so that those who are under their authority cannot
+extricate themselves from it. The governments of our day--all of them,
+the most despotic and the liberal alike--have become what Herzen so well
+called "Ghenghis Khan with the telegraph;" that is to say, organizations
+of violence based on no principle but the grossest tyranny, and at the
+same time taking advantage of all the means invented by science for the
+peaceful collective social activity of free and equal men, used by them
+to enslave and oppress their fellows.
+
+Governments and the ruling classes no longer take their stand on
+right or even on the semblance of justice, but on a skillful
+organization carried to such a point of perfection by the aid of
+science that everyone is caught in the circle of violence and has
+no chance of escaping from it. This circle is made up now of four
+methods of working upon men, joined together like the limes of a
+chain ring.
+
+The first and oldest method is intimidation. This consists in
+representing the existing state organization--whatever it may be,
+free republic or the most savage despotism--as something sacred
+and immutable, and therefore following any efforts to alter it
+with the cruellest punishments. This method is in use now--as it
+has been from olden times--wherever there is a government: in
+Russia against the so-called Nihilists, in America against
+Anarchists, in France against Imperialists, Legitimists,
+Communards, and Anarchists.
+
+Railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs, and the great
+perfection of the means of getting rid of men for years, without
+killing them, by solitary confinement, where, hidden from the
+world, they perish and are forgotten, and the many other modern
+inventions employed by government, give such power that when once
+authority has come into certain hands, the police, open and
+secret, the administration and prosecutors, jailers and
+executioners of all kinds, do their work so zealously that there
+is no chance of overturning the government, however cruel and
+senseless it may be.
+
+The second method is corruption. It consists in plundering the
+industrious working people of their wealth by means of taxes and
+distributing it in satisfying the greed of officials, who are
+bound in return to support and keep up the oppression of the
+people. These bought officials, from the highest ministers to the
+poorest copying clerks, make up an unbroken network of men bound
+together by the same interest--that of living at the expense of
+the people. They become the richer the more submissively they
+carry out the will of the government; and at all times and places,
+sticking at nothing, in all departments support by word and deed
+the violence of government, on which their own prosperity also
+rests.
+
+The third method is what I can only describe as hypnotizing the
+people. This consists in checking the moral development of men,
+and by various suggestions keeping them back in the ideal of life,
+outgrown by mankind at large, on which the power of government
+rests. This hypnotizing process is organized at the present in the
+most complex manner, and starting from their earliest childhood,
+continues to act on men till the day of their death. It begins in
+their earliest years in the compulsory schools, created for this
+purpose, in which the children have instilled into them the ideas
+of life of their ancestors, which are in direct antagonism with
+the conscience of the modern world. In countries where there is a
+state religion, they teach the children the senseless blasphemies
+of the Church catechisms, together with the duty of obedience to
+their superiors. In republican states they teach them the savage
+superstition of patriotism and the same pretended obedience to the
+governing authorities.
+
+The process is kept up during later years by the encouragement of
+religious and patriotic superstitions.
+
+The religious superstition is encouraged by establishing, with
+money taken from the people, temples, processions, memorials, and
+festivals, which, aided by painting, architecture, music, and
+incense, intoxicate the people, and above all by the support of
+the clergy, whose duty consists in brutalizing the people and
+keeping them in a permanent state of stupefaction by their
+teaching, the solemnity of their services, their sermons, and
+their interference in private life--at births, deaths, and
+marriages. The patriotic superstition is encouraged by the
+creation, with money taken from the people, of national fêtes,
+spectacles, monuments, and festivals to dispose men to attach
+importance to their own nation, and to the aggrandizement of the
+state and its rulers, and to feel antagonism and even hatred for
+other nations. With these objects under despotic governments there
+is direct prohibition against printing and disseminating books to
+enlighten the people, and everyone who might rouse the people from
+their lethargy is exiled or imprisoned. Moreover, under every
+government without exception everything is kept back that might
+emancipate and everything encouraged that tends to corrupt the
+people, such as literary works tending to keep them in the
+barbarism of religious and patriotic superstition, all kinds of
+sensual amusements, spectacles, circuses, theaters, and even the
+physical means of inducing stupefaction, as tobacco and alcohol,
+which form the principal source of revenue of states. Even
+prostitution is encouraged, and not only recognized, but even
+organized by the government in the majority of states. So much for
+the third method.
+
+The fourth method consists in selecting from all the men who have
+been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain
+number, exposing them to special and intensified means of
+stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive
+instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities
+needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them
+at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and
+definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural
+and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful
+labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special
+clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining
+objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this
+purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition
+in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines,
+submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men
+(in these days of universal conscription, all young men),
+hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the
+governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their
+command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving
+men.
+
+By this method the circle of violence is completed.
+
+Intimidation, corruption, and hypnotizing bring people into a
+condition in which they are willing to be soldiers; the soldiers
+give the power of punishing and plundering them (and purchasing
+officials with the spoils), and hypnotizing them and converting
+them in time into these same soldiers again.
+
+The circle is complete, and there is no chance of breaking through
+it by force.
+
+Some persons maintain that freedom from violence, or at least a
+great diminution of it, may be gained by the oppressed forcibly
+overturning the oppressive government and replacing it by a new
+one under which such violence and oppression will be unnecessary,
+but they deceive themselves and others, and their efforts do not
+better the position of the oppressed, but only make it worse.
+Their conduct only tends to increase the despotism of government.
+Their efforts only afford a plausible pretext for government to
+strengthen their power.
+
+Even if we admit that under a combination of circumstances
+specially unfavorable for the government, as in France in 1870,
+any government might be forcibly overturned and the power
+transferred to other hands, the new authority would rarely be less
+oppressive than the old one; on the contrary, always having to
+defend itself against its dispossessed and exasperated enemies, it
+would be more despotic and cruel, as has always been the rule in
+all revolutions.
+
+While socialists and communists regard the individualistic,
+capitalistic organization of society as an evil, and the
+anarchists regard as an evil all government whatever, there are
+royalists, conservatives, and capitalists who consider any
+socialistic or communistic organization or anarchy as an evil, and
+all these parties have no means other than violence to bring men
+to agreement. Whichever of these parties were successful in
+bringing their schemes to pass, must resort to support its
+authority to all the existing methods of violence, and even invent
+new ones.
+
+The oppressed would be another set of people, and coercion would
+take some new form; but the violence and oppression would be
+unchanged or even more cruel, since hatred would be intensified by
+the struggle, and new forms of oppression would have been devised.
+So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at
+revolution, all conspiracies, and all violent changes of
+government. Every conflict only strengthens the means of
+oppression in the hands of those who happen at a given moment to
+be in power.
+
+The position of our Christian society, and especially the ideals
+most current in it, prove this in a strikingly convincing way.
+
+There remains now only one sphere of human life not encroached
+upon by government authority--that is the domestic, economic
+sphere, the sphere of private life and labor. And even this is
+now--thanks to the efforts of communists and socialists--being
+gradually encroached upon by government, so that labor and
+recreation, dwellings, dress, and food will gradually, if the
+hopes of the reformers are successful, be prescribed and regulated
+by government.
+
+The slow progress of eighteen centuries has brought the Christian
+nations again to the necessity of deciding the question they have
+evaded--the question of the acceptance or non-acceptance of
+Christ's teaching, and the question following upon it in social
+life of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. But there
+is this difference, that whereas formerly men could accept or
+refuse to accept the solution given by Christ, now that solution
+cannot be avoided, since it alone can save men from the slavery in
+which they are caught like a net.
+
+But it is not only the misery of the position which makes this
+inevitable.
+
+While the pagan organization has been proved more and more false,
+the truth of the Christian religion has been growing more and more
+evident.
+
+Not in vain have the best men of Christian humanity, who
+apprehended the truth by spiritual intuition, for eighteen
+centuries testified to it in spite of every menace, every
+privation, and every suffering. By their martyrdom they passed on
+the truth to the masses, and impressed it on their hearts.
+
+Christianity has penetrated into the consciousness of humanity,
+not only negatively by the demonstration of the impossibility of
+continuing in the pagan life, but also through its simplification,
+its increased clearness and freedom from the superstitions
+intermingled with it, and its diffusion through all classes of the
+population.
+
+Eighteen centuries of Christianity have not passed without an
+effect even on those who accepted it only externally. These
+eighteen centuries have brought men so far that even while they
+continue to live the pagan life which is no longer consistent with
+the development of humanity, they not only see clearly all the
+wretchedness of their position, but in the depths of their souls
+they believe (they can only live through this belief) that the
+only salvation from this position is to be found in fulfilling the
+Christian doctrine in its true significance. As to the time and
+manner of salvation, opinions are divided according to the
+intellectual development and the prejudices of each society. But
+every man of the modern world recognizes that our salvation lies
+in fulfilling the law of Christ. Some believers in the
+supernatural character of Christianity hold that salvation will
+come when all men are brought to believe in Christ, whose second
+coming is at hand. Other believers in supernatural Christianity
+hold that salvation will come through the Church, which will draw
+all men into its fold, train them in the Christian virtues, and
+transform their life. A third section, who do not admit the
+divinity of Christ, hold that the salvation of mankind will be
+brought about by slow and gradual progress, through which the
+pagan principles of our existence will be replaced by the
+principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity--that is, by
+Christian principles. A fourth section, who believe in the social
+revolution, hold that salvation will come when through a violent
+revolution men are forced into community of property, abolition of
+government, and collective instead of individual industry--that is
+to say, the realization of one side of the Christian doctrine. In
+one way or another all men of our day in their inner consciousness
+condemn the existing effete pagan order, and admit, often
+unconsciously and while regarding themselves as hostile to
+Christianity, that our salvation is only to be found in the
+application of the Christian doctrine, or parts of it, in its true
+significance to our daily life.
+
+Christianity cannot, as its Founder said, be realized by the
+majority of men all at once; it must grow like a huge tree from a
+tiny seed. And so it has grown, and now has reached its full
+development, not yet in actual life, but in the conscience of men
+of to-day.
+
+Now not only the minority, who have always comprehended
+Christianity by spiritual intuition, but all the vast majority who
+seem so far from it in their social existence recognize its true
+significance.
+
+Look at individual men in their private life, listen to their
+standards of conduct in their judgment of one another; hear not
+only their public utterances, but the counsels given by parents
+and guardians to the young in their charge; and you will see that,
+far as their social life based on violence may be from realizing
+Christian truth, in their private life what is considered good by
+all without exception is nothing but the Christian virtues; what
+is considered as bad is nothing but the antichristian vices. Those
+who consecrate their lives self-sacrificingly to the service of
+humanity are regarded as the best men. The selfish, who make use
+of the misfortunes of others for their own advantage, are regarded
+as the worst of men.
+
+Though some non-Christian ideals, such as strength, courage, and
+wealth, are still worshiped by a few who have not been penetrated
+by the Christian spirit, these ideals are out of date and are
+abandoned, if not by all, at least by all those regarded as the
+best people. There are no ideals, other than the Christian ideals,
+which are accepted by all and regarded as binding on all.
+
+The position of our Christian humanity, if you look at it from the
+outside with all its cruelty and degradation of men, is terrible
+indeed. But if one looks at it within, in its inner consciousness,
+the spectacle it presents is absolutely different.
+
+All the evil of our life seems to exist only because it has been
+so for so long; those who do the evil have not had time yet to
+learn how to act otherwise, though they do not want to act as they
+do.
+
+All the evil seems to exist through some cause independent of the
+conscience of men.
+
+Strange and contradictory as it seems, all men of the present day
+hate the very social order they are themselves supporting.
+
+I think it is Max Müller who describes the amazement of an Indian
+convert to Christianity, who after absorbing the essence of the
+Christian doctrine came to Europe and saw the actual life of
+Christians. He could not recover from his astonishment at the
+complete contrast between the reality and what he had expected to
+find among Christian nations. If we feel no astonishment at the
+contrast between our convictions and our conduct, that is because
+the influences, tending to obscure the contrast, produce an effect
+upon us too. We need only look at our life from the point of view
+of that Indian, who understood Christianity in its true
+significance, without any compromises or concessions, we need but
+look at the savage brutalities of which our life is full, to be
+appalled at the contradictions in the midst of which we live often
+without observing them.
+
+We need only recall the preparations for war, the mitrailleuses,
+the silver-gilt bullets, the torpedoes, and--the Red Cross; the
+solitary prison cells, the experiments of execution by
+electricity--and the care of the hygienic welfare of prisoners;
+the philanthropy of the rich, and their life, which produces the
+poor they are benefiting.
+
+And these inconsistencies are not, as it might seem, because men
+pretend to be Christians while they are really pagans, but because
+of something lacking in men, or some kind of force hindering them
+from being what they already feel themselves to be in their
+consciousness, and what they genuinely wish to be.  Men of the
+present day do not merely pretend to hate oppression, inequality,
+class distinction, and every kind of cruelty to animals as well as
+human beings.  They genuinely detest all this, but they do not
+know how to put a stop to it, or perhaps cannot decide to give up
+what preserves it all, and seems to them necessary.
+
+Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and
+worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he
+receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the
+people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing
+cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to
+make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel
+the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting
+one's whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or
+to preparing oneself and others for the work of murder.  And ask
+him whether it is laudable and worthy of a man, and suitable for a
+Christian, to employ himself, for a salary, in seizing wretched,
+misguided, often illiterate and drunken, creatures because they
+appropriate the property of others--on a much smaller scale than
+we do--or because they kill men in a different fashion from that
+in which we undertake to do it--and shutting them in prison for
+it, ill treating them and killing them; and whether it is laudable
+and worthy of a man and a Christian to preach for a salary to the
+people not Christianity, but superstitions which one knows to be
+stupid and pernicious; and whether it is laudable and worthy of a
+man to rob his neighbor for his gratification of what he wants to
+satisfy his simplest needs, as the great landowners do; or to
+force him to exhausting labor beyond his strength to augment one's
+wealth, as do factory owners and manufacturers; or to profit by
+the poverty of men to increase one's gains, as merchants do.  And
+everyone taken separately, especially if one's remarks are
+directed at someone else, not himself, will answer, No!  And yet
+the very man who sees all the baseness of those actions, of his
+own free will, uncoerced by anyone, often even for no pecuniary
+profit, but only from childish vanity, for a china cross, a scrap
+of ribbon, a bit of fringe he is allowed to wear, will enter
+military service, become a magistrate or justice of the peace,
+commissioner, archbishop, or beadle, though in fulfilling these
+offices he must commit acts the baseness and shamefulness of which
+he cannot fail to recognize.
+
+I know that many of these men will confidently try to prove that
+they have reasons for regarding their position as legitimate and
+quite indispensable.  They will say in their defense that
+authority is given by God, that the functions of the state are
+indispensable for the welfare of humanity, that property is not
+opposed to Christianity, that the rich young man was only
+commanded to sell all he had and give to the poor if he wished to
+be perfect, that the existing distribution of property and our
+commercial system must always remain as they are, and are to the
+advantage of all, and so on.  But, however much they try to
+deceive themselves and others, they all know that what they are
+doing is opposed to all the beliefs which they profess, and in the
+depths of their souls, when they are left alone with their
+conscience, they are ashamed and miserable at the recollection of
+it, especially if the baseness of their action has been pointed
+out to them.  A man of the present day, whether he believes in the
+divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to see that to assist in
+the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in
+taking from a poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on
+cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle officials, who live in
+luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some
+man we have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the
+streets; or in plundering and butchering in war; or in inculcating
+savage and idolatrous superstitious in the place of the law of
+Christ; or in impounding the cow found on one's land, though it
+belongs to a man who has no land; or to cheat the workman in a
+factory, by imposing fines for accidentally spoiled articles; or
+making a poor man pay double the value for anything simply because
+he is in the direst poverty;--not a man of the present day can
+fail to know that all these actions are base and disgraceful, and
+that they need not do them.  They all know it.  They know that
+what they are doing is wrong, and would not do it for anything in
+the world if they had the power of resisting the forces which shut
+their eyes to the criminality of their actions and impel them to
+commit them.
+
+In nothing is the pitch of inconsistency modern life has attained
+to so evident as in universal conscription, which is the last
+resource and the final expression of violence.
+
+Indeed, it is only because this state of universal armament has
+been brought about gradually and imperceptibly, and because
+governments have exerted, in maintaining it, every resource of
+intimidation, corruption, brutalization, and violence, that we do
+not see its flagrant inconsistency with the Christian ideas and
+sentiments by which the modern world is permeated.
+
+We are so accustomed to the inconsistency that we do not see all
+the hideous folly and immorality of men voluntarily choosing the
+profession of butchery as though it were an honorable career, of
+poor wretches submitting to conscription, or in countries where
+compulsory service has not been introduced, of people voluntarily
+abandoning a life of industry to recruit soldiers and train them
+as murderers.  We know that all of these men are either
+Christians, or profess humane and liberal principles, and they
+know that they thus become partly responsible--through universal
+conscription, personally responsible--for the most insane,
+aimless, and brutal murders.  And yet they all do it.
+
+More than that, in Germany, where compulsory service first
+originated, Caprivi has given expression to what had been hitherto
+so assiduously concealed--that is, that the men that the soldiers
+will have to kill are not foreigners alone, but their own
+countrymen, the very working people from whom they themselves are
+taken.  And this admission has not opened people's eyes, has not
+horrified them! They still go like sheep to the slaughter, and
+submit to everything required of them.
+
+And that is not all: the Emperor of Germany has lately shown still
+more clearly the duties of the army, by thanking and rewarding a
+soldier for killing a defenseless citizen who made his approach
+incautiously.  By rewarding an action always regarded as base and
+cowardly even by men on the lowest level of morality, William has
+shown that a soldier's chief duty--the one most appreciated by the
+authorities--is that of executioner; and not a professional
+executioner who kills only condemned criminals, but one ready to
+butcher any innocent man at the word of command.
+
+And even that is not all. In 1892, the same William, the ENFANT
+TERRIBLE of state authority, who says plainly what other people
+only think, in addressing some soldiers gave public utterance to
+the following speech, which was reported next day in thousands of
+newspapers: "Conscripts!" he said, "you have sworn fidelity to ME
+before the altar and the minister of God!  You are still too young
+to understand all the importance of what has been said here; let
+your care before all things be to obey the orders and instructions
+given you.  You have sworn fidelity TO ME, lads of my guard; THAT
+MEANS THAT YOU ARE NOW MY SOLDIERS, that YOU HAVE GIVEN YOURSELVES
+TO ME BODY AND SOUL.  For you there is now but one enemy, MY
+enemy.  IN THESE DAYS OF SOCIALISTIC SEDITION IT MAY COME TO PASS
+THAT I COMMAND YOU TO FIRE ON YOUR OWN KINDRED, YOUR BROTHERS,
+EVEN YOUR OWN FATHERS AND MOTHERS--WHICH GOD FORBID!--even then
+you are bound to obey my orders without hesitation."
+
+This man expresses what all sensible rulers think, but studiously
+conceal.  He says openly that the soldiers are in HIS service, at
+HIS disposal, and must be ready for HIS advantage to murder even
+their brothers and fathers.
+
+In the most brutal words he frankly exposes all the horrors and
+criminality for which men prepare themselves in entering the army,
+and the depths of ignominy to which they fall in promising
+obedience.  Like a bold hypnotizer, he tests the degree of
+insensibility of the hypnotized subject.  He touches his skin with
+a red-hot iron; the skin smokes and scorches, but the sleeper does
+not awake.
+
+This miserable man, imbecile and drunk with power, outrages in
+this utterance everything that can be sacred for a man of the
+modern world.  And yet all the Christians, liberals, and
+cultivated people, far from resenting this outrage, did not even
+observe it.
+
+The last, the most extreme test is put before men in its coarsest
+form.  And they do not seem even to notice that it is a test, that
+there is any choice about it.  They seem to think there is no
+course open but slavish submission.  One would have thought these
+insane words, which outrage everything a man of the present day
+holds sacred, must rouse indignation.  But there has been nothing
+of the kind.
+
+All the young men through the whole of Europe are exposed year
+after year to this test, and with very few exceptions they
+renounce all that a man can hold sacred, all express their
+readiness to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the
+bidding of the first crazy creature dressed up in a livery with
+red and gold trimming, and only wait to be told where and when
+they are to kill.  And they actually are ready.
+
+Every savage has something he holds sacred, something for which he
+is ready to suffer, something he will not consent to do.  But what
+is it that is sacred to the civilized man of to-day?  They say to
+him:  "You must become my slave, and this slavery may force you
+to kill even your own father;" and he, often very well educated,
+trained in all the sciences at the university, quietly puts his
+head under the yoke.  They dress him up in a clown's costume, and
+order him to cut capers, turn and twist and bow, and kill--he does
+it all submissively.  And when they let him go, he seems to shake
+himself and go back to his former life, and he continues to
+discourse upon the dignity of man, liberty, equality, and
+fraternity as before.
+
+"Yes, but what is one to do?" people often ask in genuine
+perplexity.  "If everyone would stand out it would be something,
+but by myself, I shall only suffer without doing any good to
+anyone."
+
+And that is true. A man with the social conception of life cannot
+resist. The aim of his life is his personal welfare. It is better
+for his personal welfare for him to submit, and he submits.
+
+Whatever they do to him, however they torture or humiliate him, he
+will submit, for, alone, he can do nothing; he has no principle
+for the sake of which he could resist violence alone.  And those
+who control them never allow them to unite together.  It is often
+said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will
+put an end to war.  That is an error.  As the means of
+extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the
+state conception of life to submission can be improved to
+correspond.  They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions,
+they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like
+senseless cattle.  Some will want beating to make them move,
+others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of
+ribbon or gold lace.
+
+And of this mass of men so brutalized as to be ready to promise to
+kill their own parents, the social reformers--conservatives,
+liberals, socialists, and anarchists--propose to form a rational
+and moral society.  What sort of moral and rational society can be
+formed out of such elements?  With warped and rotten planks you
+cannot build a house, however you put them together.  And to form
+a rational moral society of such men is just as impossible a task.
+They can be formed into nothing but a herd of cattle, driven by
+the shouts and whips of the herdsmen. As indeed they are.
+
+So, then, we have on one side men calling themselves Christians,
+and professing the principles of liberty, equality, and
+fraternity, and along with that ready, in the name of liberty, to
+submit to the most slavish degradation; in the name of equality,
+to accept the crudest, most senseless division of men by externals
+merely into higher and lower classes, allies and enemies; and, in
+the name of fraternity, ready to murder their brothers [see
+footnote].
+
+    [Footnote: The fact that among certain nations, as
+    the English and the American, military service is not
+    compulsory (though already one hears there are some
+    who advocate that it should be made so) does not
+    affect the servility of the citizens to the government
+    in principle.  Here we have each to go and kill or be
+    killed, there they have each to give the fruit of their
+    toil to pay for the recruiting and training of soldiers.]
+
+The contradiction between life and conscience and the misery
+resulting from it have reached the extreme limit and can go no
+further.  The state organization of life based on violence, the
+aim of which was the security of personal, family, and social
+welfare, has come to the point of renouncing the very objects for
+which it was founded--it has reduced men to absolute renunciation
+and loss of the welfare it was to secure.
+
+The first half of the prophecy has been fulfilled in the
+generation of men who have not accepted Christ's teaching, Their
+descendants have been brought now to the absolute necessity of
+patting the truth of the second half to the test of experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE WILL EMANCIPATE
+MEN FROM THE MISERIES OF OUR PAGAN LIFE.
+
+The External Life of Christian Peoples Remains Pagan Though they are
+Penetrated by Christian Consciousness--The Way Out of this Contradiction
+is by the Acceptance of the Christian Theory of Life--Only Through
+Christianity is Every Man Free, and Emancipated of All Human
+Authority--This Emancipation can be Effected by no Change in External
+Conditions of Life, but Only by a Change in the Conception of Life--The
+Christian Ideal of Life Requires Renunciation of all Violence, and in
+Emancipating the Man who Accepts it, Emancipates the Whole World from
+All External Authorities--The Way Out of the Present Apparently Hopeless
+Position is for Every Man who is Capable of Assimilating the Christian
+Conception of Life, to Accept it and Live in Accordance with it--But Men
+Consider this Way too Slow, and Look for Deliverance Through Changes in
+Material Conditions of Life Aided by Government--That Will Lead to No
+Improvement, as it is simply Increasing the Evil under which Men are
+Suffering--A Striking Instance of this is the Submission to Compulsory
+Military Service, which it would be More Advantageous for Every Man to
+Refuse than to Submit to--The Emancipation of Men Can Only be Brought
+About by each Individual Emancipating Himself, and the Examples of this
+Self-emancipation which are already Appearing Threaten the Destruction
+of Governmental Authority--Refusal to Comply with the Unchristian
+Demands of Government Undermines the Authority of the State and
+Emancipates Men--And therefore Cases of such Non-compliance are Regarded
+with more Dread by State Authorities than any Conspiracies or Acts of
+Violence--Examples of Non-compliance in Russia, in Regard to Oath of
+Allegiance, Payment of Taxes, Passports, Police Duties, and Military
+Service--Examples of such Non-compliance in other States--Governments do
+not Know how to Treat Men who Refuse to Comply with their Demands on
+Christian Grounds--Such People, without Striking a Blow, Undermine the
+very Basis of Government from Within--To Punish them is Equivalent to
+Openly Renouncing Christianity, and Assisting in Diffusing the Very
+Principle by which these Men justify their Non-compliance--So
+Governments are in a Helpless Position--Men who Maintain the Uselessness
+of Personal Independence, only Retard the Dissolution of the Present
+State Organization Based on Force.
+
+
+The position of the Christian peoples in our days has remained
+just as cruel as it was in the times of paganism.  In many
+respects, especially in the oppression of the masses, it has
+become even more cruel than it was in the days of paganism.
+
+But between the condition of men in ancient times and their
+condition in our days there is just the difference that we see in
+the world of vegetation between the last days of autumn and the
+first days of spring.  In the autumn the external lifelessness in
+nature corresponds with its inward condition of death, while in
+the spring the external lifelessness is in sharp contrast with the
+internal state of reviving and passing into new forms of life.
+
+In the same way the similarity between the ancient heathen life
+and the life of to-day is merely external: the inward condition of
+men in the times of heathenism was absolutely different from their
+inward condition at the present time.
+
+Then the outward condition of cruelty and of slavery was in
+complete harmony with the inner conscience of men, and every step
+in advance intensified this harmony; now the outward condition of
+cruelty and of slavery is completely contradictory to the
+Christian consciousness of men, and every step in advance only
+intensifies this contradiction.
+
+Humanity is passing through seemingly unnecessary, fruitless
+agonies.  It is passing through something like the throes of
+birth. Everything is ready for the new life, but still the new
+life does not come.
+
+There seems no way out of the position.  And there would be none,
+except that a man (and thereby all men) is gifted with the power
+of forming a different, higher theory of life, which at once frees
+him from all the bonds by which he seems indissolubly fettered.
+
+And such a theory is the Christian view of life made known to
+mankind eighteen hundred years ago.
+
+A man need only make this theory of life his own, for the fetters
+which seemed so indissolubly forged upon him to drop off of
+themselves, and for him to feel himself absolutely free, just as a
+bird would feel itself free in a fenced-in place directly it tools
+to its wings.
+
+People talk about the liberty of the Christian Church, about
+giving or not giving freedom to Christians.  Underlying all these
+ideas and expressions there is some strange misconception.
+Freedom cannot be bestowed on or taken from a Christian or
+Christians.  Freedom is an inalienable possession of the
+Christian.
+
+If we talk of bestowing freedom on Christians or withholding it
+from them, we are obviously talking not of real Christians but of
+people who only call themselves Christians.  A Christian cannot
+fail to be free, because the attainment of the aim he sets before
+himself cannot be prevented or even hindered by anyone or
+anything.
+
+Let a man only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to
+understand it, let him understand, that is, that his life belongs
+not to him--not to his own individuality, nor to his family, nor
+to the state--but to him who has sent him into the world, and let
+him once understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of
+his own individuality, nor his family, nor of the state, but the
+infinite law of him from whom he has come; and he will not only
+feel himself absolutely free from every human power, but will even
+cease to regard such power as at all able to hamper anyone.
+
+Let a man but realize that the aim of his life is the fulfillment
+of God's law, and that law will replace all other laws for him,
+and he will give it his sole allegiance, so that by that very
+allegiance every human law will lose all binding and controlling
+power in his eyes.
+
+The Christian is independent of every human authority by the fact
+that he regards the divine law of love, implanted in the soul of
+every man, and brought before his consciousness by Christ, as the
+sole guide of his life and other men's also.
+
+The Christian may be subjected to external violence, he may be
+deprived of bodily freedom, he may be in bondage to his passions
+(he who commits sin is the slave of sin), but he cannot be in
+bondage in the sense of being forced by any danger or by any
+threat of external harm to perform an act which is against his
+conscience.
+
+He cannot be compelled to do this, because the deprivations and
+sufferings which form such a powerful weapon against men of the
+state conception of life, have not the least power to compel him.
+
+Deprivations and sufferings take from them the happiness for which
+they live; but far from disturbing the happiness of the Christian,
+which consists in the consciousness of fulfilling the will of God,
+they may even intensify it, when they are inflicted on him for
+fulfilling his will.
+
+And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner
+divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the
+external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law
+of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state
+obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to
+anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what
+is called allegiance.
+
+For a Christian the oath of allegiance to any government whatever
+--the very act which is regarded as the foundation of the
+existence of a state--is a direct renunciation of Christianity.
+For the man who promises unconditional obedience in the future to
+laws, made or to be made, by that very promise is in the most,
+positive manner renouncing Christianity, which means obeying in
+every circumstance of life only the divine law of love he
+recognizes within him.
+
+Under the pagan conception of life it was possible to carry out
+the will of the temporal authorities, without infringing the law
+of God expressed in circumcisions, Sabbaths, fixed times of
+prayer, abstention from certain kinds of food, and so on.  The one
+law was not opposed to the other.  But that is just the
+distinction between the Christian religion and heathen religion.
+Christianity does not require of a man certain definite negative
+acts, but puts him in a new, different relation to men, from which
+may result the most diverse acts, which cannot be defined
+beforehand.  And therefore the Christian not only cannot promise
+to obey the will of any other man, without knowing what will be
+required by that will; he not only cannot obey the changing laws
+of man, but he cannot even promise to do anything definite at a
+certain time, or to abstain from doing anything for a certain
+time.  For he cannot know what at any time will be required of him
+by that Christian law of love, obedience to which constitutes the
+meaning of life for him.  The Christian, in promising
+unconditional fulfillment of the laws of men in the future, would
+show plainly by that promise that the inner law of God does not
+constitute for him the sole law of his life.
+
+For a Christian to promise obedience to men, or the laws of men,
+is just as though a workman bound to one employer should also
+promise to carry out every order that might be given him by
+outsiders.  One cannot serve two masters.
+
+The Christian is independent of human authority, because he
+acknowledges God's authority alone.  His law, revealed by Christ,
+he recognizes in himself, and voluntarily obeys it.
+
+And this independence is gained, not by means of strife, not by
+the destruction of existing forms of life, but only by a change in
+the interpretation of life.  This independence results first from
+the Christian recognizing the law of love, revealed to him by his
+teacher, as perfectly sufficient for all human relations, and
+therefore he regards every use of force as unnecessary and
+unlawful; and secondly, from the fact that those deprivations and
+sufferings, or threats of deprivations and sufferings (which
+reduce the man of the social conception of life to the necessity
+of obeying) to the Christian from his different conception of
+life, present themselves merely as the inevitable conditions of
+existence.  And these conditions, without striving against them by
+force, he patiently endures, like sickness, hunger, and every
+other hardship, but they cannot serve him as a guide for his
+actions.  The only guide for the Christian's actions is to be
+found in the divine principle living within him, which cannot be
+checked or governed by anything.
+
+The Christian acts according to the words of the prophecy applied
+to his teacher: "He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any
+man hear his voice in the streets.  A bruised reed shall he not
+break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth
+judgment unto victory." (Matt. xii. 19, 20.)
+
+The Christian will not dispute with anyone, nor attack anyone, nor
+use violence against anyone. On the contrary, he will bear
+violence without opposing it.  But by this very attitude to
+violence, he will not only himself be free, but will free the
+whole world from all external power.
+
+"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  If
+there were any doubt of Christianity being the truth, the perfect
+liberty, that nothing can curtail, which a man experiences
+directly he makes the Christian theory of life his own, would be
+an unmistakable proof of its truth.
+
+Men in their present condition are like a swarm of bees hanging in
+a cluster to a branch.  The position of the bees on the branch is
+temporary, and must inevitably be changed.  They must start off
+and find themselves a habitation.  Each of the bees knows this,
+and desires to change her own and the others' position, but no one
+of them can do it till the rest of them do it.  They cannot all
+start off at once, because one hangs on to another and hinders her
+from separating from the swarm, and therefore they all continue to
+hang there.  It would seem that the bees could never escape from
+their position, just as it seems that worldly men, caught in the
+toils of the state conception of life, can never escape.  And
+there would be no escape for the bees, if each of them were not a
+living, separate creature, endowed with wings of its own.
+Similarly there would be no escape for men, if each were not a
+living being endowed with the faculty of entering into the
+Christian conception of life.
+
+If every bee who could fly, did not try to fly, the others, too,
+would never be stirred, and the swarm would never change its
+position.  And if the man who has mastered the Christian
+conception of life would not, without waiting for other people,
+begin to live in accordance with this conception, mankind would
+never change its position.  But only let one bee spread her wings,
+start off, and fly away, and after her another, and another, and
+the clinging, inert cluster would become a freely flying swarm of
+bees.  Just in the same way, only let one man look at life as
+Christianity teaches him to look at it, and after him let another
+and another do the same, and the enchanted circle of existence in
+the state conception of life, from which there seemed no escape,
+will be broken through.
+
+But men think that to set all men free by this means is
+too slow a process, that they must find some other means by which
+they could set all men free at once.  It is just as though the
+bees who want to start and fly away should consider it too long a
+process to wait for all the swarm to start one by one; and should
+think they ought to find some means by which it would not be
+necessary for every separate bee to spread her wings and fly off,
+but by which the whole swarm could fly at once where it wanted to.
+But that is not possible; till a first, a second, a third, a
+hundredth bee spreads her wings and flies off of her own accord,
+the swarm will not fly off and will not begin its new life.  Till
+every individual man makes the Christian conception of life his
+own, and begins to live in accord with it, there can be no
+solution of the problem of human life, and no establishment of a
+new form of life.
+
+One of the most striking phenomena of our times is precisely this
+advocacy of slavery, which is promulgated among the masses, not by
+governments, in whom it is inevitable, but by men who, in
+advocating socialistic theories, regard themselves as the
+champions of freedom.
+
+These people advance the opinion that the amelioration of life,
+the bringing of the facts of life into harmony with the
+conscience, will come, not as the result of the personal efforts
+of individual men, but of itself as the result of a certain
+possible reconstruction of society effected in some way or other.
+The idea is promulgated that men ought not to walk on their own
+legs where they want and ought to go, but that a kind of floor
+under their feet will be moved somehow, so that on it they can
+reach where they ought to go without moving their own legs.  And,
+therefore, all their efforts ought to be directed, not to going so
+far as their strength allows in the direction they ought to go,
+but to standing still and constructing such a floor.
+
+In the sphere of political economy a theory is propounded which
+amounts to saying that the worse things are the better they are;
+that the greater the accumulation of capital, and therefore the
+oppression of the workman, the nearer the day of emancipation,
+and, therefore, every personal effort on the part of a man to free
+himself from the oppression of capital is useless.  In the sphere
+of government it is maintained that the greater the power of the
+government, which, according to this theory, ought to intervene in
+every department of private life in which it has not yet
+intervened, the better it will be, and that therefore we ought to
+invoke the interference of government in private life.  In
+politics and international questions it is maintained that the
+improvement of the means of destruction, the multiplication of
+armaments, will lead to the necessity of making war by means of
+congresses, arbitration, and so on.  And, marvelous to say, so
+great is the dullness of men, that they believe in these theories,
+in spite of the fact that the whole course of life, every step
+they take, shows how unworthy they are of belief.
+
+The people are suffering from oppression, and to deliver them from
+this oppression they are advised to frame general measures for the
+improvement of their position, which measures are to be intrusted
+to the authorities, and themselves to continue to yield obedience
+to the authorities.  And obviously all that results from this is
+only greater power in the hands of the authorities, and greater
+oppression resulting from it.
+
+Not one of the errors of men carries them so far away from the aim
+toward which they are struggling as this very one.  They do all
+kinds of different things for the attainment of their aim, but not
+the one simple obvious thing which is within reach of everyone.
+They devise the subtlest means for changing the position which is
+irksome to them, but not that simplest means, that everyone should
+refrain from doing what leads to that position.
+
+I have been told a story of a gallant police officer, who came to
+a village where the peasants were in insurrection and the military
+had been called out, and he undertook to pacify the insurrection
+in the spirit of Nicholas I., by his personal influence alone.  He
+ordered some loads of rods to be brought, and collecting all the
+peasants together into a barn, he went in with them, locking the
+door after him.  To begin with, he so terrified the peasants by
+his loud threats that, reduced to submission by him, they set to
+work to flog one another at his command.  And so they flogged one
+another until a simpleton was found who would not allow himself to
+be flogged, and shouted to his companions not to flog one another.
+Only then the fogging ceased, and the police officer made his
+escape.  Well, this simpleton's advice would never be followed by
+men of the state conception of life, who continue to flog one
+another, and teach people that this very act of self-castigation
+is the last word of human wisdom.
+
+Indeed, can one imagine a more striking instance of men flogging
+themselves than the submissiveness with which men of our times
+will perform the very duties required of them to keep them in
+slavery, especially the duty of military service?  We see people
+enslaving themselves, suffering from this slavery, and believing
+that it must be so, that it does not matter, and will not hinder
+the emancipation of men, which is being prepared somewhere,
+somehow, in spite of the ever-increasing growth of slavery.
+
+In fact, take any man of the present time whatever (I don't mean a
+true Christian, but an average man of the present day), educated
+or uneducated, believing or unbelieving, rich or poor, married or
+unmarried.  Such a man lives working at his work, or enjoying his
+amusements, spending the fruits of his labors on himself or on
+those near to him, and, like everyone, hating every kind of
+restriction and deprivation, dissension and suffering.  Such a man
+is going his way peaceably, when suddenly people come and say to
+him: First, promise and swear to us that you will slavishly obey
+us in everything we dictate to you, and will consider absolutely
+good and authoritative everything we plan, decide, and call law.
+Secondly, hand over a part of the fruits of your labors for us to
+dispose of--we will use the money to keep you in slavery, and to
+hinder you from forcibly opposing our orders.  Thirdly, elect
+others, or be yourself elected, to take a pretended share in the
+government, knowing all the while that the government will proceed
+quite without regard to the foolish speeches you, and those like
+you, may utter, and knowing that its proceedings will be according
+to our will, the will of those who have the army in their hands.
+Fourthly, come at a certain time to the law courts and take your
+share in those senseless cruelties which we perpetrate on sinners,
+and those whom we have corrupted, in the shape of penal servitude,
+exile, solitary confinement, and death.  And fifthly and lastly,
+more than all this, in spite of the fact that you maybe on the
+friendliest terms with people of other nations, be ready, directly
+we order you to do so, to regard those whom we indicate to you as
+your enemies; and be ready to assist, either in person or by
+proxy, in devastation, plunder, and murder of their men, women,
+children, and aged alike--possibly your own kinsmen or relations--if
+that is necessary to us.
+
+One would expect that every man of the present day who has a grain
+of sense left, might reply to such requirements, "But why should I
+do all this?"  One would think every right-minded man must say in
+amazement: "Why should I promise to yield obedience to everything
+that has been decreed first by Salisbury, then by Gladstone; one
+day by Boulanger, and another by Parliament; one day by Peter
+III., the next by Catherine, and the day after by Pougachef; one
+day by a mad king of Bavaria, another by William?  Why should I
+promise to obey them, knowing them to be wicked or foolish people,
+or else not knowing them at all?  Why am I to hand over the fruits
+of my labors to them in the shape of taxes, knowing that the money
+will be spent on the support of officials, prisons, churches,
+armies, on things that are harmful, and on my own enslavement?
+Why should I punish myself?  Why should I go wasting my time and
+hoodwinking myself, giving to miscreant evildoers a semblance of
+legality, by taking part in elections, and pretending that I am
+taking part in the government, when I know very well that the real
+control of the government is in the hands of those who have got
+hold of the army?  Why should I go to the law courts to take part
+in the trial and punishment of men because they have sinned,
+knowing, if I am a Christian, that the law of vengeance is replaced
+by the law of love, and, if I am an educated man, that punishments
+do not reform, but only deprave those on whom they are inflicted?
+And why, most of all, am I to consider as enemies the people of a
+neighboring nation, with whom I have hitherto lived and with whom
+I wish to live in love and harmony, and to kill and rob them, or
+to bring them to misery, simply in order that the keys of the
+temple at Jerusalem may be in the hands of one archbishop and not
+another, that one German and not another may be prince in
+Bulgaria, or that the English rather than the American merchants
+may capture seals?
+
+And why, most of all, should I take part in person or hire others
+to murder my own brothers and kinsmen?  Why should I flog myself?
+It is altogether unnecessary for me; it is hurtful to me, and from
+every point of view it is immoral, base, and vile.  So why should
+I do this?  If you tell me that if I do it not I shall receive
+some injury from someone, then, in the first place, I cannot
+anticipate from anyone an injury so great as the injury you bring
+on me if I obey you; and secondly, it is perfectly clear to me
+that if we our own selves do not flog ourselves, no one will flog
+us.
+
+As for the government--that means the tzars, ministers, and
+officials with pens in their hands, who cannot force us into doing
+anything, as that officer of police compelled the peasants; the
+men who will drag us to the law court, to prison, and to
+execution, are not tzars or officials with pens in their hands,
+but the very people who are in the same position as we are.  And
+it is just as unprofitable and harmful and unpleasant to them to
+be flogged as to me, and therefore there is every likelihood that
+if I open their eyes they not only would not treat me with
+violence, but would do just as I am doing.
+
+Thirdly, even if it should come to pass that I had to suffer for it,
+even then it would be better for me to be exiled or sent to prison for
+standing up for common sense and right--which, if not to-day, at least
+within a very short time, must be triumphant--than to suffer for folly
+and wrong which must come to an end directly. And therefore, even in
+that case, it is better to run the risk of their banishing me, shutting
+me up in prison, or executing me, than of my living all my life in
+bondage, through my own fault, to wicked men. Better is this than the
+possibility of being destroyed by victorious enemies, and being stupidly
+tortured and killed by them, in fighting for a cannon, or a piece of
+land of no use to anyone, or for a senseless rag called a banner.
+
+I don't want to flog myself and I won't do it. I have no reason to do
+it. Do it yourselves, if you want it done; but I won't do it.
+
+One would have thought that not religious or moral feeling alone,
+but the simplest common sense and foresight should impel every man
+of the present day to answer and to act in that way.  But not so.
+Men of the state conception of life are of the opinion that to act
+in that way is not necessary, and is even prejudicial to the
+attainment of their object, the emancipation of men from slavery.
+They hold that we must continue, like the police officer's
+peasants, to flog one another, consoling ourselves with the
+reflection that we are talking away in the assemblies and
+meetings, founding trades unions, marching through the streets on
+the 1st of May, getting up conspiracies, and stealthily teasing
+the government that is flogging us, and that through all this it
+will be brought to pass that, by enslaving ourselves in closer and
+closer bondage, we shall very soon be free.
+
+Nothing hinders the emancipation of men from slavery so much as
+this amazing error.  Instead of every man directing his energies
+to freeing himself, to transforming his conception of life, people
+seek for an external united method of gaining freedom, and
+continue to rivet their chains faster and faster.
+
+It is much as if men were to maintain that to make up a fire there
+was no need to kindle any of the coals, but that all that was
+necessary was to arrange the coals in a certain order.  Yet the
+fact that the freedom of all men will be brought about only
+through the freedom of individual persons, becomes more and more
+clear as time goes on.  The freedom of individual men, in the name
+of the Christian conception of life, from state domination, which
+was formerly an exceptional and unnoticed phenomenon, has of late
+acquired threatening significance for state authorities.
+
+If in a former age, in the Roman times, it happened that a
+Christian confessed his religion and refused to take part in
+sacrifices, and to worship the emperors or the gods; or in the
+Middle Ages a Christian refused to worship images, or to
+acknowledge the authority of the Pope--these cases were in the
+first place a matter of chance.  A man might be placed under the
+necessity of confessing his faith, or he might live all his life
+without being placed under this necessity.  But now all men,
+without exception, are subjected to this trial of their faith.
+Every man of the present day is under the necessity of taking part
+in the cruelties of pagan life, or of refusing all participation
+in them.  And secondly, in those days cases of refusal to worship
+the gods or the images or the Pope were not incidents that had any
+material bearing on the state.  Whether men worshiped or did not
+worship the gods or the images or the Pope, the state remained
+just as powerful.  But now cases of refusing to comply with the
+unchristian demands of the government are striking at the very
+root of state authority, because the whole authority of the state
+is based on the compliance with these unchristian demands.
+
+The sovereign powers of the world have in the course of time been
+brought into a position in which, for their own preservation, they
+must require from all men actions which cannot be performed by men
+who profess true Christianity.
+
+And therefore in our days every profession of true Christianity,
+by any individual man, strikes at the most essential power of the
+state, and inevitably leads the way for the emancipation of all.
+
+What importance, one might think, can one attach to such an
+incident as some dozens of crazy fellows, as people will call
+them, refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the government,
+refusing to pay taxes, to take part in law proceedings or in
+military service?
+
+These people are punished and exiled to a distance, and life goes
+on in its old way.  One might think there was no importance in
+such incidents; but yet, it is just those incidents, more than
+anything else, that will undermine the power of the state and
+prepare the way for the freedom of men.  These are the individual
+bees, who are beginning to separate from the swarm, and are flying
+near it, waiting till the whole swarm can no longer be prevented
+from starting off after them.  And the governments know this, and
+fear such incidents more than all the socialists, communists, and
+anarchists, and their plots and dynamite bombs.
+
+A new reign is beginning.  According to the universal rule and
+established order it is required that all the subjects should take
+the oath of allegiance to the new government.  There is a general
+decree to that effect, and all are summoned to the council-houses
+to take the oath.  All at once one man in Perm, another in Tula, a
+third in Moscow, and a fourth in Kalouga declare that they will
+not take the oath, and though there is no communication between
+them, they all explain their refusal on the same grounds--namely,
+that swearing is forbidden by the law of Christ, and that even if
+swearing had not been forbidden, they could not, in the spirit of
+the law of Christ, promise to perform the evil actions required of
+them in the oath, such as informing against all such as may act
+against the interests of the government, or defending their
+government with firearms or attacking its enemies. They are
+brought before rural police officers, district police captains,
+priests, and governors. They are admonished, questioned,
+threatened, and punished; but they adhere to their resolution, and
+do not take the oath.  And among the millions of those who did
+take the oath, those dozens go on living who did not take the
+oath.  And they are questioned:
+
+"What, didn't you take the oath?"
+
+"No, I didn't take the oath."
+
+"And what happened--nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The subjects of a state are all bound to pay taxes.  And everyone
+pays taxes, till suddenly one man in Kharkov, another in Tver, and
+a third in Samara refuse to pay taxes--all, as though in
+collusion, saying the same thing.  One says he will only pay when
+they tell him what object the money taken from him will be spent
+on.  "If it is for good deeds," he says, "he will give it of his
+own accord, and more even than is required of him. If for evil
+deeds, then he will give nothing voluntarily, because by the law
+of Christ, whose follower he is, he cannot take part in evil
+deeds."  The others, too, say the same in other words, and will
+not voluntarily pay the taxes.
+
+Those who have anything to be taken have their property taken from
+them by force; as for those who have nothing, they are left alone.
+
+"What, didn't you pay the tax?"
+
+"No, I didn't pay it."
+
+"And what happened-nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+There is the institution of passports.  Everyone moving from his
+place of residence is bound to carry one, and to pay a duty on it.
+Suddenly people are to be found in various places declaring that
+to carry a passport is not necessary, that one ought not to
+recognize one's dependence on a state which exists by means of
+force; and these people do not carry passports, or pay the duty on
+them.  And again, it's impossible to force those people by any
+means to do what is required.  They send them to jail, and let
+them out again, and these people live without passports.
+
+All peasants are bound to fill certain police offices--that of
+village constable, and of watchman, and so on.  Suddenly in
+Kharkov a peasant refuses to perform this duty, justifying his
+refusal on the ground that by the law of Christ, of which he is a
+follower, he cannot put any man in fetters, lock him up, or drag
+him from place to place.  The same declaration is made by a
+peasant in Tver, another in Tambov.  These peasants are abused,
+beaten, shut up in prison, but they stick to their resolution and
+don't fill these offices against their convictions.  And at last
+they cease to appoint them as constables.  And again nothing
+happens.
+
+All citizens are obliged to take a share in law proceedings in the
+character of jurymen. Suddenly the most different people--mechanics,
+professors, tradesmen, peasants, servants, as though by agreement refuse
+to fill this office, and not on the grounds allowed as sufficient by
+law, but because any process at law is, according to their views,
+unchristian. They fine these people, trying not to let them have an
+opportunity of explaining their motives in public, and replace them by
+others. And again nothing can be done.
+
+All young men of twenty-one years of age are obliged to draw lots
+for service in the army. All at once one young man in Moscow,
+another in Tver, a third in Kharkov, and a fourth in Kiev present
+themselves before the authorities, and, as though by previous
+agreement, declare that they will not take the oath, they will not
+serve because they are Christians.  I will give the details of one
+of the first cases, since they have become more frequent, which I
+happen to know about [footnote: All the details of this case, as
+well as those preceding it, are authentic].  The same treatment
+has been repeated in every other case.  A young man of fair
+education refuses in the Moscow Townhall to take the oath.  No
+attention is paid to what he says, and it is requested that he
+should pronounce the words of the oath like the rest.  He
+declines, quoting a particular passage of the Gospel in which
+swearing is forbidden.  No attention is paid to his arguments, and
+he is again requested to comply with the order, but he does not
+comply with it.  Then it is supposed that he is a sectary and
+therefore does not understand Christianity in the right sense,
+that is to say, not in the sense in which the priests in the pay
+of the government understand it.  And the young man is conducted
+under escort to the priests, that they may bring him to reason.
+The priests begin to reason with him, but their efforts in
+Christ's name to persuade him to renounce Christ obviously have no
+influence on him; he is pronounced incorrigible and sent back
+again to the army.  He persists in not taking the oath and openly
+refuses to perform any military duties.  It is a case that has not
+been provided for by the laws.  To overlook such a refusal to
+comply with the demands of the authorities is out of the question,
+but to put such a case on a par with simple breach of discipline
+is also out of the question.
+
+After deliberation among themselves, the military authorities
+decide to get rid of the troublesome young man, to consider him as
+a revolutionist, and they dispatch him under escort to the
+committee of the secret police.  The police authorities and
+gendarmes cross-question him, but nothing that he says can be
+brought under the head of any of the misdemeanors which come under
+their jurisdiction.  And there is no possibility of accusing him
+either of revolutionary acts or revolutionary plotting, since he
+declares that he does not wish to attack anything, but, on the
+contrary, is opposed to any use of force, and, far from plotting
+in secret, he seeks every opportunity of saying and doing all that
+he says and does in the most open manner.  And the gendarmes,
+though they are bound by no hard-and-fast rules, still find no
+ground for a criminal charge in the young man, and, like the
+clergy, they send him back to the army.  Again the authorities
+deliberate together, and decide to accept him though he has not
+taken the oath, and to enrol him among the soldiers.  They put him
+into the uniform, enrol him, and send him under guard to the place
+where the army is quartered.  There the chief officer of the
+division which he enters again expects the young man to perform
+his military duties, and again he refuses to obey, and in the
+presence of other soldiers explains the reason of his refusal,
+saying that he as a Christian cannot voluntarily prepare himself
+to commit murder, which is forbidden by the law of Moses.
+
+This incident occurs in a provincial town.  The case awakens the
+interest, and even the sympathy, not only of outsiders, but even
+of the officers.  And the chief officers consequently do not
+decide to punish this refusal of obedience with disciplinary
+measures.  To save appearances, though, they shut the young man up
+in prison, and write to the highest military authorities to
+inquire what they are to do.  To refuse to serve in the army, in
+which the Tzar himself serves, and which enjoys the blessing of
+the Church, seems insanity from the official point of view.
+Consequently they write from Petersburg that, since the young man
+must be out of his mind, they must not use any severe treatment
+with him, but must send him to a lunatic asylum, that his mental
+condition may be inquired into and be scientifically treated.
+They send him to the asylum in the hope that he will remain there,
+like another young man, who refused ten years ago at Tver to serve
+in the army, and who was tortured in the asylum till he submitted.
+But even this step does not rid the military authorities of the
+inconvenient man.  The doctors examine him, interest themselves
+warmly in his case, and naturally finding in him no symptoms of
+mental disease, send him back to the army.  There they receive
+him, and making believe to have forgotten his refusal, and his
+motives for it, they again request him to go to drill, and again
+in the presence of the other soldiers he refuses and explains the
+reason of his refusal.  The affair continues to attract more and
+more attention, both among the soldiers and the inhabitants of the
+town.  Again they write to Petersburg, and thence comes the decree
+to transfer the young man to some division of the army stationed
+on the frontier, in some place where the army is under martial
+law, where he can be shot for refusing to obey, and where the
+matter can proceed without attracting observation, seeing that
+there are few Russians and Christians in such a distant part, but
+the majority are foreigners and Mohammedans.  This is accordingly
+done.  They transfer him to a division stationed on the Zacaspian
+border, and in company with convicts send him to a chief officer
+who is notorious for his harshness and severity.
+
+All this time, through all these changes from place to place, the
+young man is roughly treated, kept in cold, hunger, and filth, and
+life is made burdensome to him generally.  But all these
+sufferings do not compel him to change his resolution.  On the
+Zacaspian border, where he is again requested to go on guard fully
+armed, he again declines to obey.  He does not refuse to go and
+stand near the haystacks where they place him, but refuses to take
+his arms, declaring that he will not use violence in any case
+against anyone.  All this takes place in the presence of the other
+soldiers.  To let such a refusal pass unpunished is impossible,
+and the young man is put on his trial for breach of discipline.
+The trial takes place, and he is sentenced to confinement in the
+military prison for two years.  He is again transferred, in
+company with convicts, by étape, to Caucasus, and there he is shut
+up in prison and falls under the irresponsible power of the
+jailer.  There he is persecuted for a year and a half, but he does
+not for all that alter his decision not to bear arms, and he
+explains why he will not do this to everyone with whom he is
+brought in contact.  At the end of the second year they set him
+free, before the end of his term of imprisonment, reckoning it
+contrary to law to keep him in prison after his time of military
+service was over, and only too glad to get rid of him as soon as
+possible.
+
+Other men in various parts of Russia behave, as though by
+agreement, precisely in the same way as this young man, and in all
+these cases the government has adopted the same timorous,
+undecided, and secretive course of action.  Some of these men are
+sent to the lunatic asylum, some are enrolled as clerks and
+transferred to Siberia, some are sent to work in the forests, some
+are sent to prison, some are fined.  And at this very time some
+men of this kind are in prison, not charged with their real
+offense--that is, denying the lawfulness of the action of the
+government, but for non-fulfillment of special obligations imposed
+by government.  Thus an officer of reserve, who did not report his
+change of residence, and justified this on the ground that he
+would not serve in the army any longer, was fined thirty rubles
+for non-compliance with the orders of the superior authority.
+This fine he also declined voluntarily to pay.  In the same way
+some peasants and soldiers who have refused to be drilled and to
+bear arms have been placed under arrest on a charge of breach of
+discipline and insolence.
+
+And cases of refusing to comply with the demands of government when they
+are opposed to Christianity, and especially cases of refusing to serve
+in the army, are occurring of late not in Russia only, but everywhere.
+Thus I happen to know that in Servia men of the so-called sect of
+Nazarenes steadily refuse to serve in the army, and the Austrian
+Government has been carrying on a fruitless contest with them for years,
+punishing them with imprisonment. In the year 1885 there were 130 such
+cases. I know that in Switzerland in the year 1890 there were men in
+prison in the castle of Chillon for declining to serve in the army,
+whose resolution was not shaken by their punishment. There have been
+such cases in Sweden, and the men who refused obedience were sent to
+prison in exactly the same way, and the government studiously concealed
+these cases from the people. There have been similar cases also in
+Prussia. I know of the case of a sub-lieutenant of the Guards, who in
+1891 declared to the authorities in Berlin that he would not, as a
+Christian, continue to serve, and in spite of all admonitions, threats,
+and punishments he stuck to his resolution. In the south of France a
+society has arisen of late bearing the name of the Hinschists (these
+facts are taken from the PEACE HERALD, July, 1891), the members of which
+refuse to enter military service on the grounds of their Christian
+principles. At first they were enrolled in the ambulance corps, but now,
+as their numbers increase, they are subjected to punishment for
+non-compliance, but they still refuse to bear arms just the same.
+
+The socialists, the communists, the anarchists, with their bombs
+and riots and revolutions, are not nearly so much dreaded by
+governments as these disconnected individuals coming from
+different parts, and all justifying their non-compliance on the
+grounds of the same religion, which is known to all the world.
+Every government knows by what means and in what manner to defend
+itself from revolutionists, and has resources for doing so, and
+therefore does not dread these external foes.  But what are
+governments to do against men who show the uselessness,
+superfluousness, and perniciousness of  all governments, and who
+do  not contend against them, but simply do not need them and do
+without them, and therefore are unwilling to take any part in
+them?  The revolutionists say: The form of government is bad in
+this respect and that respect; we must overturn it and substitute
+this or that form of government.  The Christian says: I know
+nothing about the form of government, I don't know whether it is
+good or bad, and I don't want to overturn it precisely because I
+don't know whether it is good or bad, but for the very same reason
+I don't want to support it either.  And I  not only don't want to,
+but I can't, because what it demands of me is against my
+conscience.
+
+All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian--the
+oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings, and military service. And
+the whole power of the government rests on these very obligations.
+
+Revolutionary enemies attack the government from without.
+Christianity does not attack it at all, but, from within, it
+destroys all the foundations on which government rests.
+
+Among the Russian people, especially since the age of Peter I., the
+protest of Christianity against the government has never ceased, and the
+social organization has been such that men emigrate in communes to
+Turkey, to China, and to uninhabited lands, and not only feel no need of
+state aid, but always regard the state as a useless burden, only to be
+endured as a misfortune, whether it happens to be Turkish, Russian, or
+Chinese. And so, too, among the Russian people more and more frequent
+examples have of late appeared of conscious Christian freedom from
+subjection to the state. And these examples are the more alarming for
+the government from the fact that these non-compliant persons often
+belong not to the so-called lower uneducated classes, but are men of
+fair or good education; and also from the fact that they do not in these
+days justify their position by any mystic and exceptional views, as in
+former times, do not associate themselves with any superstitious or
+fanatic rites, like the sects who practice self-immolation by fire, or
+the wandering pilgrims, but put their refusal on the very simplest and
+clearest grounds, comprehensible to all, and recognized as true by all.
+
+Thus they refuse the voluntary payment of taxes, because taxes are spent
+on deeds of violence--on the pay of men of violence--soldiers, on the
+construction of prisons, fortresses, and cannons. They as Christians
+regard it as sinful and immoral to have any hand in such deeds.
+
+Those who refuse to take the oath of allegiance refuse because to
+promise obedience to authorities, that is, to men who are given to
+deeds of violence, is contrary to the sense of Christ's teaching.
+They refuse to take the oath in the law courts, because oaths are
+directly forbidden by the Gospel.  They refuse to perform police
+duties, because in the performance of these duties they must use
+force against their brothers and ill treat them, and a Christian
+cannot do that.  They refuse to take part in trials at law,
+because they consider every appeal to law is fulfilling the law of
+vengeance, which is inconsistent with the Christian law of
+forgiveness and love.  They refuse to take any part in military
+preparations and in the army, because they cannot be executioners,
+and they are unwilling to prepare themselves to be so.
+
+The motives in all these cases are so excellent that, however
+despotic governments may be, they could hardly punish them openly.
+To punish men for refusing to act against their conscience the
+government must renounce all claim to good sense and benevolence.
+And they assure people that they only rule in the name of good
+sense and benevolence.
+
+What are governments to do against such people?
+
+Governments can of course flog to death or execute or keep in
+perpetual imprisonment all enemies who want to overturn them by
+violence, they can lavish gold on that section of the people who
+are ready to destroy their enemies.  But what can they do against
+men who, without wishing to overturn or destroy anything, desire
+simply for their part to do nothing against the law of Christ, and
+who, therefore, refuse to perform the commonest state
+requirements, which are, therefore, the most indispensable to the
+maintenance of the state?
+
+If they had been revolutionists, advocating and practicing
+violence and murder, their suppression would have been an easy
+matter; some of them could have been bought over, some could have
+been duped, some could have been overawed, and these who could not
+be bought over, duped, or overawed would have been treated as
+criminals, enemies of society, would have been executed or
+imprisoned, and the crowd would have approved of the action of the
+government.  If they had been fanatics, professing some peculiar
+belief, it might have been possible, in disproving the
+superstitious errors mixed in with their religion, to attack also
+the truth they advocate.  But what is to be done with men who
+profess no revolutionary ideas nor any peculiar religious dogmas,
+but merely because they are unwilling to do evil to any man,
+refuse to take the oath, to pay taxes, to take part in law
+proceedings, to serve in the army, to fulfill, in fact, any of the
+obligations upon which the whole fabric of a state rests?  What is
+to done with such people?  To buy them over with bribes is
+impossible; the very risks to which they voluntarily expose
+themselves show that they are incorruptible.  To dupe them into
+believing that this is their duty to God is also impossible, since
+their refusal is based on the clear, unmistakable law of God,
+recognized even by those who are trying to compel men to act
+against it.  To terrify them by threats is still less possible,
+because the deprivations and sufferings to which they are
+subjected only strengthen their desire to follow the faith by
+which they are commanded: to obey God rather than men, and not to
+fear those who can destroy the body, but to fear him who can
+destroy body and soul.  To kill them or keep them in perpetual
+imprisonment is also impossible.  These men have friends, and a
+past; their way of thinking and acting is well known; they are
+known by everyone for good, gentle, peaceable people, and they
+cannot be regarded as criminals who must be removed for the safety
+of society.  And to put men to death who are regarded as good men
+is to provoke others to champion them and justify their refusal.
+And it is only necessary to explain the reasons of their refusal
+to make clear to everyone that these reasons have the same force
+for all other men, and that they all ought to have done the same
+long ago.  These cases put the ruling powers into a desperate
+position.  They see that the prophecy of Christianity is coming to
+pass, that it is loosening the fetters of those in chains, and
+setting free them that are in bondage, and that this must
+inevitably be the end of all oppressors.  The ruling authorities
+see this, they know that their hours are numbered, and they can do
+nothing.  All that they can do to save themselves is only
+deferring the hour of their downfall.  And this they do, but their
+position is none the less desperate.
+
+It is like the position of a conqueror who is trying to save a
+town which has been been set on fire by its own inhabitants.
+Directly he puts out the conflagration in one place, it is alight
+in two other places; directly he gives in to the fire and cuts off
+what is on fire from a large building, the building itself is
+alight at both ends.  These separate fires may be few, but they
+are burning with a flame which, however small a spark it starts
+from, never ceases till it has set the whole ablaze.
+
+Thus it is that the ruling authorities are in such a defenseless
+position before men who advocate Christianity, that but little is
+necessary to overthrow this sovereign power which seems so
+powerful, and has held such an exalted position for so many
+centuries.  And yet social reformers are busy promulgating the
+idea that it is not necessary and is even pernicious and immoral
+for every man separately to work out his own freedom.  As though,
+while one set of men have been at work a long while turning a
+river into a new channel, and had dug out a complete water-course
+and had only to open the floodgates for the water to rush in and
+do the rest, another set of men should come along and begin to
+advise them that it would be much better, instead of letting the
+water out, to construct a machine which would ladle the water up
+from one side and pour it over the other side.
+
+But the thing has gone too far.  Already ruling governments feel
+their weak and defenseless position, and men of Christian
+principles are awakening from their apathy, and already begin to
+feel their power.
+
+"I am come to send a fire on the earth," said Christ, "and what
+will I, if it be already kindled?"
+
+And this fire is beginning to burn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+EVIL  CANNOT BE SUPPRESSED BY THE PHYSICAL FORCE OF THE
+GOVERNMENT--THE MORAL PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS BROUGHT ABOUT NOT
+ONLY BY INDIVIDUAL RECOGNITION OF TRUTH, BUT ALSO THROUGH THE
+ESTABLISHMENT OF A PUBLIC OPINION.
+
+Christianity Destroys the State--But Which is Most Necessary:
+Christianity or the State?--There are Some who Assert the Necessity of a
+State Organization, and Others who Deny it, both Arguing from same First
+Principles--Neither Contention can be Proved by Abstract Argument--The
+Question must be Decided by the Stage in the Development of Conscience
+of Each Man, which will either Prevent or Allow him to Support a
+Government Organization--Recognition of the Futility and Immorality of
+Supporting a State Organization Contrary to Christian Principles will
+Decide the Question for Every Man, in Spite of any Action on Part of the
+State--Argument of those who Defend the Government, that it is a Form of
+Social Life, Needed to Protect the Good from the Wicked, till all
+Nations and all Members of each Nation have Become Christians--The Most
+Wicked are Always those in Power--The whole History of Humanity is the
+History of the Forcible Appropriation of Power by the Wicked and their
+Oppression of the Good--The Recognition by Governments of the Necessity
+of Opposing Evil by Force is Equivalent to Suicide on their Part--The
+Abolition of State-violence cannot Increase the Sum Total of Acts of
+Violence--The Suppression of the Use of Force is not only Possible, but
+is even Taking Place before Our Eyes--But it will Never be Suppressed by
+the Violence of Government, but through Men who have Attained Power by
+Evidence Recognizing its Emptiness and Becoming Better and Less Capable
+of Using Force--Individual Men and also Whole Nations Pass Through this
+Process--By this Means Christianity is Diffused Through Consciousness of
+Men, not only in Spite of Use of Violence by Government, but even
+Through its Action, and therefore the Suppression is not to be Dreaded,
+but is Brought About by the National Progress of Life--Objection of
+those who Defend State Organization that Universal Adoption of
+Christianity is hardly Likely to be Realized at any Time--The General
+Adoption of the Truths of Christianity is being Brought About not only
+by the Gradual and Inward Means, that is, by Knowledge of the Truth,
+Prophetic Insight, and Recognition of the Emptiness of Power, and
+Renunciation of it by Individuals, but also by Another External Means,
+the Acceptance of a New Truth by Whole Masses of Men on a Lower Level of
+Development Through Simple Confidence in their Leaders--When a Certain
+Stage in the Diffusion of a Truth has been Reached, a Public Opinion is
+Created which Impels a Whole Mass of Men, formerly Antagonistic to the
+New Truth, to Accept it--And therefore all Men may Quickly be Brought to
+Renounce the use of Violence when once a Christian Public Opinion is
+Established--The Conviction of Force being Necessary Hinders the
+Establishment of a Christian Public Opinion--The Use of Violence Leads
+Men to Distrust the Spiritual Force which is the Only Force by which
+they Advance--Neither Nations nor Individuals have been really
+Subjugated by Force, but only by Public Opinion, which no Force can
+Resist--Savage Nations and Savage Men can only be Subdued by the
+Diffusion of a Christian Standard among them, while actually Christian
+Nations in order to Subdue them do all they can to Destroy a Christian
+Standard--These Fruitless Attempts to Civilize Savages Cannot be Adduced
+as Proofs that Men Cannot be Subdued by Christianity--Violence by
+Corrupting Public Opinion, only Hinders the Social Organization from
+being What it Ought to Be--And by the Use of Violence being Suppressed,
+a Christian Public Opinion would be Established--Whatever might be the
+Result of the Suppression of Use of Force, this Unknown Future could not
+be Worse than the Present Condition, and so there is no Need to Dread
+it--To Attain Knowledge of the Unknown, and to Move Toward it, is the
+Essence of Life.
+
+
+Christianity in its true sense puts an end to government.  So it
+was understood at its very commencement; it was for that cause
+that Christ was crucified.  So it has always been understood by
+people who were not under the necessity of justifying a Christian
+government.  Only from the time that the heads of government
+assumed an external and nominal Christianity, men began to invent
+all the impossible, cunningly devised theories by means of which
+Christianity can be reconciled with government.  But no honest and
+serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility
+of true Christianity--the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of
+injuries, and love--with government, with its pomp, acts of
+violence, executions, and wars.  The profession of true
+Christianity not only excludes the possibility of recognizing
+government, but even destroys its very foundations.
+
+But if it is so, and we are right in saying that Christianity is
+incompatible with government, then the question naturally presents
+itself: which is more necessary to the good of humanity, in which
+way is men's happiness best to be secured, by maintaining the
+organization of government or by destroying it and replacing it by
+Christianity?
+
+Some people maintain that government is more necessary for
+humanity, that the destruction of the state organization would
+involve the destruction of all that humanity has gained, that the
+state has been and still is the only form in which humanity can
+develop.  The evil which we see among peoples living under a
+government organization they attribute not to that type of
+society, but to its abuses, which, they say, can be corrected
+without destroying it, and thus humanity, without discarding the
+state organization, can develop and attain a high degree of
+happiness. And men of this way of thinking bring forward in
+support of their views arguments which they think irrefutable
+drawn from history, philosophy, and even religion.  But there are
+men who hold on the contrary that, as there was a time when
+humanity lived without government, such an organization is
+temporary, and that a time must come when men need a new
+organization, and that that time has come now.  And men of this
+way of thinking also bring forward in support of their views
+arguments which they think irrefutable from philosophy, history,
+and religion.
+
+Volumes may be written in defense of the former view (and volumes
+indeed have long ago been written and more will still be written
+on that side), but much also can be written against it (and much
+also, and most brilliantly, has been written--though more recently
+--on this side).
+
+And it cannot be proved, as the champions of the state maintain,
+that the destruction of government involves a social chaos, mutual
+spoliation and murder, the destruction of all social institutions,
+and the return of mankind to barbarism.  Nor can it be proved as
+the opponents of government maintain that men have already become
+so wise and good that they will not spoil or murder one another,
+but will prefer peaceful associations to hostilities; that of
+their own accord, unaided by the state, they will make all the
+arrangements that they need, and that therefore government, far
+from being any aid, under show of guarding men exerts a pernicious
+and brutalizing influence over them.  It is impossible to prove
+either of these contentions by abstract reasoning.  Still less
+possible is it to prove them by experiment, since the whole matter
+turns on the question, ought we to try the experiment?  The
+question whether or not the time has come to make an end of
+government would be unanswerable, except that there exists another
+living means of settling it beyond dispute.
+
+We may dispute upon the question whether the nestlings are ready
+to do without the mother-hen and to come out of the eggs, or
+whether they are not yet advanced enough.  But the young birds
+will decide the question without any regard for our arguments when
+they find themselves cramped for space in the eggs.  Then they
+will begin to try them with their beaks and come out of them of
+their own accord.
+
+It is the same with the question whether the time has come to do
+away with the governmental type of society and to replace it by a
+new type.  If a man, through the growth of a higher conscience,
+can no longer comply with the demands of government, he finds
+himself cramped by it and at the same time no longer needs its
+protection.  When this comes to pass, the question whether men are
+ready to discard the governmental type is solved.  And the
+conclusion will be as final for them as for the young birds
+hatched out of the eggs.  Just as no power in the world can put
+them back into the shells, so can no power in the world bring men
+again under the governmental type of society when once they have
+outgrown it.
+
+"It may well be that government was necessary and is still
+necessary for all the advantages which you attribute to it," says
+the man who has mastered the Christian theory of life. "I only
+know that on the one hand, government is no longer necessary for
+ME, and on the other hand, I can no longer carry out the measures
+that are necessary to the existence of a government.  Settle for
+yourselves what you need for your life.  I cannot prove the need
+or the harm of governments in general.  I know only what I need
+and do not need, what I can do and what I cannot.  I know that I
+do not need to divide myself off from other nations, and therefore
+I cannot admit that I belong exclusively to any state or nation,
+or that I owe allegiance to any government.  I know that I do not
+need all the government institutions organized within the state,
+and therefore I cannot deprive people who need my labor to give it
+in the form of taxes to institutions which I do not need, which
+for all I know may be pernicious.  I know that I have no need of
+the administration or of courts of justice founded upon force, and
+therefore I can take no part in either.  I know that I do not need
+to attack and slaughter other nations or to defend myself from
+them with arms, and therefore I can take no part in wars or
+preparations for wars.  It may well be that there are people who
+cannot help regarding all this as necessary and indispensable.  I
+cannot dispute the question with them, I can only speak for
+myself; but I can say with absolute certainty that I do not need
+it, and that I cannot do it.  And I do not need this and I cannot
+do it, not because such is my own, my personal will, but because
+such is the will of him who sent me into life, and gave me an
+indubitable law for my conduct through life."
+
+Whatever arguments may be advanced in support of the contention
+that the suppression of government authority would be injurious
+and would lead to great calamities, men who have once outgrown the
+governmental form of society cannot go back to it again.  And all
+the reasoning in the world cannot make the man who has outgrown
+the governmental form of society take part in actions disallowed
+by his conscience, any more than the full-grown bird can be made
+to return into the egg-shell.
+
+"But even it be so," say the champions of the existing order of
+things, "still the suppression of government violence can only be
+possible and desirable when all men have become Christians.  So
+long as among people nominally Christians there are unchristian
+wicked men, who for the gratification of their own lusts are ready
+to do harm to others, the suppression of government authority, far
+from being a blessing to others, would only increase their
+miseries.  The suppression of the governmental type of society is
+not only undesirable so long as there is only a minority of true
+Christians; it would not even be desirable if the whole of a
+nation were Christians, but among and around them were still
+unchristian men of other nations.  For these unchristian men would
+rob, outrage, and kill the Christians with impunity and would make
+their lives miserable.  All that would result, would be that the
+bad would oppress and outrage the good with impunity.  And
+therefore the authority of government must not be suppressed till
+all the wicked and rapacious people in the world are extinct.  And
+since this will either never be, or at least cannot be for a long
+time to come, in spite of the efforts of individual Christians to
+be independent of government authority, it ought to be maintained
+in the interests of the majority.  The champions of government
+assert that without it the wicked will oppress and outrage the
+good, and that the power of the government enables the good to
+resist the wicked."
+
+But in this assertion the champions of the existing order of
+things take for granted the proposition they want to prove.  When
+they say that except for the government the bad would oppress the
+good, they take it for granted that the good are those who at the
+present time are in possession of power, and the bad are those who
+are in subjection to it.  But this is just what wants proving.  It
+would only be true if the custom of our society were what is, or
+rather is supposed to be, the custom in China; that is, that the
+good always rule, and that directly those at the head of
+government cease to be better than those they rule over, the
+citizens are bound to remove them.  This is supposed to be the
+custom in China.  In reality it is not so and can never be so.
+For to remove the heads of a government ruling by force, it is not
+the right alone, but the power to do so that is needed.  So that
+even in China this is only an imaginary custom.  And in our
+Christian world we do not even suppose such a custom, and we have
+nothing on which to build up the supposition that it is the good
+or the superior who are in power; in reality it is those who have
+seized power and who keep it for their own and their retainers'
+benefit.
+
+The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must
+love power.  And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but
+quite consistent with the very opposite qualities--pride, cunning,
+cruelty.
+
+Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others,
+without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses,
+executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be
+maintained.
+
+"If the power of government is suppressed the more wicked will
+oppress the less wicked," say the champions of state authority.
+But when the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Romans conquered
+the Greeks, and the Barbarians conquered the Romans, is it
+possible that all the conquerors were always better than those
+they conquered?  And the same with the transitions of power within
+a state from one personage to another: has the power always passed
+from a worse person to a better one?  When Louis XVI. was removed
+and Robespierre came to power, and afterward Napoleon--who ruled
+then, a better man or a worse?  And when were better men in power,
+when the Versaillist party or when the Commune was in power?  When
+Charles I. was ruler, or when Cromwell?  And when Peter III. was
+Tzar, or when he was killed and Catherine was Tzaritsa in one-half
+of Russia and Pougachef ruled the other?  Which was bad then, and
+which was good?  All men who happen to be in authority assert that
+their authority is necessary to keep the bad from oppressing the
+good, assuming that they themselves are the good PAR EXCELLENCE,
+who protect other good people from the bad.
+
+But ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom
+force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force
+would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means
+doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing
+wrong.
+
+
+To submit means to prefer suffering to using force.  And to prefer
+suffering to using force means to be good, or at least less wicked
+than those who do unto others what they would not like themselves.
+
+And therefore, in all probability, not the better but the worse
+have always ruled and are ruling now.  There may be bad men among
+those who are ruled, but it cannot be that those who are better
+have generally ruled those who are worse.
+
+It might be possible to suppose this with the inexact heathen
+definition of good; but with the clear Christian definition of
+good and evil, it is impossible to imagine it.
+
+If the more or less good, and the more or less bad cannot be
+distinguished in the heathen world, the Christian conception of
+good and evil has so clearly defined the characteristics of the
+good and the wicked, that it is impossible to confound them.
+According to Christ's teaching the good are those who are meek and
+long-suffering, do not resist evil by force, forgive injuries, and
+love their enemies; those are wicked who exalt themselves,
+oppress, strive, and use force.  Therefore by Christ's teaching
+there can be no doubt whether the good are to be found among
+rulers or ruled, and whether the wicked are among the ruled or the
+rulers.  Indeed it is absurd even to speak of Christians ruling.
+
+Non-Christians, that is those who find the aim of their lives in
+earthly happiness, must always rule Christians, the aim of whose
+lives is the renunciation of such earthly happiness.
+
+This difference has always existed and has become more and more
+defined as the Christian religion has been more widely diffused
+and more correctly understood.
+
+The more widely true Christianity was diffused and the more it
+penetrated men's conscience, the more impossible it was for
+Christians to be rulers, and the easier it became for non-Christians
+to rule them.
+
+"To get rid of governmental violence in a society in which all are
+not true Christians, will only result in the wicked dominating the
+good and oppressing them with impunity," say the champions of the
+existing order of things. But it has never been, and cannot be
+otherwise.  So it has always been from the beginning of the world,
+and so it is still.  THE WICKED WILL ALWAYS DOMINATE THE GOOD, AND
+WILL ALWAYS OPPRESS THEM.  Cain overpowered Abel, the cunning
+Jacob oppressed the guileless Esau and was in his turn deceived by
+Laban, Caiaphas and Pilate oppressed Christ, the Roman emperors
+oppressed Seneca, Epictetus, and the good Romans who lived in
+their times.  John IV. with his favorites, the syphilitic drunken
+Peter with his buffoons, the vicious Catherine with her paramours,
+ruled and oppressed the industrious religious Russians of their
+times.
+
+William is ruling over the Germans, Stambouloff over the
+Bulgarians, the Russian officials over the Russian people.  The
+Germans have dominated the Italians, now they dominate the
+Hungarians and Slavonians; the Turks have dominated and still
+dominate the Slavonians and Greeks; the English dominate the
+Hindoos, the Mongolians dominate the Chinese.
+
+So that whether governmental violence is suppressed or not, the
+position of good men, in being oppressed by the wicked, will be
+unchanged.
+
+To terrify men with the prospect of the wicked dominating the good
+is impossible, for that is just what has always been, and is now,
+and cannot but be.
+
+The whole history of pagan times is nothing but a recital of the
+incidents and means by which the more wicked gained possession of
+power over the less wicked, and retained it by cruelties and
+deceptions, ruling over the good under the pretense of guarding
+the right and protecting the good from the wicked.  All the
+revolutions in history are only examples of the more wicked
+seizing power and oppressing the good.  In declaring that if their
+authority did not exist the more wicked would oppress the good,
+the ruling authorities only show their disinclination to let other
+oppressors come to power who would like to snatch it from them.
+
+But in asserting this they only accuse themselves, say that their
+power, i. e., violence, is needed to defend men from other
+possible oppressors in the present or the future [see footnote].
+
+    [Footnote: I may quote in this connection the amazingly
+    naive and comic declaration of the Russian authorities,
+    the oppressors of other nationalities--the Poles, the
+    Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews.  The
+    Russian Government has oppressed its subjects for
+    centuries, and has never troubled itself about the
+    Little Russians of Poland, or the Letts of the Baltic
+    provinces, or the Russian peasants, exploited by everyone.
+    And now it has all of a sudden become the champion of
+    the oppressed--the very oppressed whom it is itself
+    oppressing.]
+
+The weakness of the use of violence lies in the fact that all the
+arguments brought forward by oppressors in their own defense can
+with even better reason be advanced against them.  They plead the
+danger of violence--most often imagined in the future--but they
+are all the while continuing to practice actual violence
+themselves.  "You say that men used to pillage and murder in the
+past, and that you are afraid that they will pillage and murder
+one another if your power were no more.  That may happen--or it
+may not happen.  But the fact that you ruin thousands of men in
+prisons, fortresses, galleys, and exile, break up millions of
+families and ruin millions of men, physically as well as morally,
+in the army, that fact is not an imaginary but a real act of
+violence, which, according to your own argument, one ought to
+oppose by violence.  And so you are yourselves these wicked men
+against whom, according to your own argument, it is absolutely
+necessary to use violence," the oppressed are sure to say to their
+oppressors.  And non-Christian men always do say, and think and
+act on this reasoning.  If the oppressed are more wicked than
+their oppressors, they attack them and try to overthrow them; and
+in favorable circumstances they succeed in overthrowing them, or
+what is more common, they rise into the ranks of the oppressors
+and assist in their acts of violence.
+
+So that the very violence which the champions of government hold
+up as a terror--pretending that except for its oppressive power
+the wicked would oppress the good--has really always existed and
+will exist in human society.  And therefore the suppression of
+state violence cannot in any case be the cause of increased
+oppression of the good by the wicked.
+
+If state violence ceased, there would be acts of violence perhaps
+on the part of different people, other than those who had done
+deeds of violence before.  But the total amount of violence could
+not in any case be increased by the mere fact of power passing
+from one set of men to another.
+
+"State violence can only cease when there are no more wicked men
+in society," say the champions of the existing order of things,
+assuming in this of course that since there will always be wicked
+men, it can never cease.  And that would be right enough if it
+were the case, as they assume, that the oppressors are always the
+best of men, and that the sole means of saving men from evil is by
+violence.  Then, indeed, violence could never cease.  But since
+this is not the case, but quite the contrary, that it is not the
+better oppress the worse, but the worse oppress the better, and
+since violence will never put an end to evil, and there is,
+moreover, another means of putting an end to it, the assertion
+that violence will never cease is incorrect.  The use of violence
+grows less and less and evidently must disappear.  But this will
+not come to pass, as some champions of the existing order imagine,
+through the oppressed becoming better and better under the
+influence of government (on the contrary, its influence causes
+their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men
+are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that
+even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less
+wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable of using
+violence.
+
+The progressive movement of humanity does not proceed from the
+better elements in society seizing power and making those who are
+subject to them better, by forcible means, as both conservatives
+and revolutionists imagine.  It proceeds first and principally
+from the fact that all men in general are advancing steadily and
+undeviatingly toward a more and more conscious assimilation of the
+Christian theory of life; and secondly, from the fact that, even
+apart from conscious spiritual life, men are unconsciously brought
+into a more Christian attitude to life by the very process of one
+set of men grasping the power, and again being replaced by others.
+
+The worse elements of society, gaining possession of power, under the
+sobering influence which always accompanies power, grow less and less
+cruel, and become incapable of using cruel forms of violence.
+Consequently others are able to seize their place, and the same process
+of softening and, so to say, unconscious Christianizing goes on with
+them. It is something like the process of ebullition. The majority of
+men, having the non-Christian view of life, always strive for power and
+struggle to obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest,
+the least Christian elements of society overpower the most gentle,
+well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence to the
+upper ranks of society. And in them is Christ's prophecy fulfilled: "Woe
+to you that are rich! woe unto you that are full! woe unto you when all
+men shall speak well of you!" For the men who are in possession of power
+and all that results from it--glory and wealth--and have attained the
+various aims they set before themselves, recognize the vanity of it all
+and return to the position from which they came. Charles V., John IV.,
+Alexander I., recognizing the emptiness and the evil of power, renounced
+it because they were incapable of using violence for their own benefit
+as they had done.
+
+But they are not the solitary examples of this recognition of the
+emptiness and evil of power. Everyone who gains a position of
+power he has striven for, every general, every minister, every
+millionaire, every petty official who has gained the place he has
+coveted for ten years, every rich peasant who has laid by some
+hundred rubles, passes through this unconscious process of
+softening.
+
+And not only individual men, but societies of men, whole nations,
+pass through this process.
+
+The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it
+gives, seem a sufficient aim for men's efforts only so long as
+they are unattained.  Directly a man reaches them he sees all
+their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of
+attraction.  They are like clouds which have form and beauty only
+from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their
+splendor vanishes.
+
+Men who are in possession of power and wealth, sometimes even
+those who have gained for themselves their power and wealth, but
+more often their heirs, cease to be so eager for power, and so
+cruel in their efforts to obtain it.
+
+Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian
+influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men
+sometimes in one, sometimes in several generations lose the vices
+which are generated by the passion for power and wealth.  They
+become less cruel and so cannot maintain their position, and are
+expelled from power by others less Christian and more wicked.
+Thus they return to a rank of society lower in position, but
+higher in morality, raising thereby the average level of Christian
+consciousness in men.  But directly after them again the worst,
+coarsest, least Christian elements of society rise to the top, and
+are subjected to the same process as their predecessors, and again
+in a generation or so, seeing the vanity of what is gained by
+violence, and having imbibed Christianity, they come down again
+among the oppressed, and their place is again filled by new
+oppressors, less brutal than former oppressors, though more so
+than those they oppress.  So that, although power remains
+externally the same as it was, with every change of the men in
+power there is a constant increase of the number of men who have
+been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the
+Christian conception of life, and with every change--though it is
+the coarsest, crudest, and least Christian who come into
+possession of power, they are less coarse and cruel and more
+Christian than their predecessors when they gained possession of
+power.
+
+Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society,
+transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to
+society.
+
+"Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of
+the hindrances to human progress resulting from the violence of
+power, gains more and more hold of men.  Christianity penetrates
+to the consciousness of men, not only in spite of the violence of
+power, but also by means of it.
+
+And therefore the assertion of the champions of the state, that if
+the power of government were suppressed the wicked would oppress
+the good, not only fails to show that that is to be dreaded, since
+it is just what happens now, but proves, on the contrary, that it
+is governmental power which enables the wicked to oppress the
+good, and is the evil most desirable to suppress, and that it is
+being gradually suppressed in the natural course of things.
+
+"But if it be true that governmental power will disappear when
+those in power become so Christian that they renounce power of
+their own accord, and there are no men found willing to take their
+place, and even if this process is already going on," say the
+champions of the existing order, "when will that come to pass?
+If, after eighteen hundred years, there are still so many eager
+for power, and so few anxious to obey, there seems no likelihood
+of its happening very soon--or indeed of its ever happening at
+all.
+
+"Even if there are, as there have always been, some men who prefer
+renouncing power to enjoying it, the mass of men in reserve, who
+prefer dominion to subjection, is so great that it is difficult to
+imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.
+
+"Before this Christianizing process could so affect all men one
+after another that they would pass from the heathen to the
+Christian conception of life, and would voluntarily abandon power
+and wealth, it would be necessary that all the coarse, half-savage
+men, completely incapable of appreciating Christianity or acting
+upon it, of whom there are always a great many in every Christian
+society, should be converted to Christianity.  More than this, all
+the savage and absolutely non-Christian peoples, who are so
+numerous outside the Christian world, must also be converted.  And
+therefore, even if we admit that this Christianizing process will
+some day affect everyone, still, judging by the amount of progress
+it has made in eighteen hundred years, it will be many times
+eighteen centuries before it will do so.  And it is therefore
+impossible and unprofitable to think at present of anything so
+impracticable as the suppression of authority.  We ought only to
+try to put authority into the best hands."
+
+And this criticism would be perfectly just, if the transition from
+one conception of life to another were only accomplished by the
+single process of all men, separately and successively, realizing,
+each for himself, the emptiness of power, and reaching Christian
+truth by the inner spiritual path.  That process goes on
+unceasingly, and men are passing over to Christianity one after
+another by this inner way.
+
+But there is also another external means by which men reach
+Christianity and by which the transition is less gradual.
+
+This transition from one organization of life to another is not
+accomplished by degrees like the sand running through the
+hourglass grain after grain.  It is more like the water filling a
+vessel floating on water. At first the water only runs in slowly
+on one side, but as the vessel grows heavier it suddenly begins to
+sink, and almost instantaneously fills with water.
+
+It is just the same with the transitions of mankind from one
+conception--and so from one organization of life--to another.  At
+first only gradually and slowly, one after another, men attain to
+the new truth by the inner spiritual way, and follow it out in
+life.  But when a certain point in the diffusion of the truth has
+been reached, it is suddenly assimilated by everyone, not by the
+inner way, but, as it were, involuntarily.
+
+That is why the champions of the existing order are wrong in
+arguing that, since only a small section of mankind has passed
+over to Christianity in eighteen centuries, it must be many times
+eighteen centuries before all the remainder do the same.  For in
+that argument they do not take into account any other means,
+besides the inward spiritual one, by which men assimilate a new
+truth and pass from one order of life to another.
+
+Men do not only assimilate a truth through recognizing it by
+prophetic insight, or by experience of life.  When the truth has
+become sufficiently widely diffused, men at a lower stage of
+development accept it all at once simply through confidence in
+those who have reached it by the inner spiritual way, and are
+applying it to life.
+
+Every new truth, by which the order of human life is changed and
+humanity is advanced, is at first accepted by only a very small
+number of men who understand it through inner spiritual intuition.
+The remainder of mankind who accepted on trust the preceding truth
+on which the existing order is based, are always opposed to the
+diffusion of the new truth.
+
+But seeing that, to begin with, men do not stand still, but are
+steadily advancing to a greater recognition of the truth and a
+closer adaptation of their life to it, and secondly, all men in
+varying degrees according to their age, their education, and their
+race are capable of understanding the new truths, at first those
+who are nearest to the men who have attained the new truth by
+spiritual intuition, slowly and one by one, but afterward more and
+more quickly, pass over to the new truth.  Thus the number of men
+who accept the new truth becomes greater and greater, and the
+truth becomes more and more comprehensible.
+
+And thus more confidence is aroused in the remainder, who are at a
+less advanced stage of capacity for understanding the truth.  And
+it becomes easier for them to grasp it, and an increasing number
+accept it.
+
+And so the movement goes on more and more quickly, and on an
+ever-increasing scale, like a snowball, till at last a public opinion in
+harmony with the new truth is created, and then the whole mass of men is
+carried over all at once by its momentum to the new truth and
+establishes a new social order in accordance with it.
+
+Those men who accept a new truth when it has gained a certain
+degree of acceptance, always pass over all at once in masses.
+They are like the ballast with which every ship is always loaded,
+at once to keep it upright and enable it to sail properly.  If
+there were no ballast, the ship would not be low enough in the
+water, and would shift its position at the slightest change in its
+conditions.  This ballast, which strikes one at first as
+superfluous and even as hindering the progress of the vessel, is
+really indispensable to its good navigation.
+
+It is the same with the mass of mankind, who not individually, but
+always in a mass, under the influence of a new social idea pass
+all at once from one organization of life to another.  This mass
+always hinders, by its inertia, frequent and rapid revolutions in
+the social order which have not been sufficiently proved by human
+experience.  And it delays every truth a long while till it has
+stood the test of prolonged struggles, and has thoroughly
+permeated the consciousness of humanity.
+
+And that is why it is a mistake to say that because only a very
+small minority of men has assimilated Christianity in eighteen
+centuries, it must take many times as many centuries for all
+mankind to assimilate it, and that since that time is so far off
+we who live in the present need not even think about it.  It is a
+mistake, because the men at a lower stage of culture, the, men and
+the nations who are represented as the obstacle to the realization
+of the Christian order of life, are the very people who always
+pass over in masses all at once to any truth that has once been
+recognized by public opinion.
+
+And therefore the transformation of human life, through which men
+in power will renounce it, and there will be none anxious to take
+their place, will not come only by all men consciously and
+separately assimilating the Christian conception of life. It will
+come when a Christian public opinion has arisen, so definite and
+easily comprehensible as to reach the whole of the inert mass,
+which is not able to attain truth by its own intuition, and
+therefore is always under the sway of public opinion.
+
+Public opinion arises spontaneously and spreads for hundreds and
+thousands of years, but it has the power of working on men by
+infection, and with great rapidity gains a hold on great numbers
+of men.
+
+"But," say the champions of the existing order, "even if it is
+true that public opinion, when it has attained a certain degree of
+definiteness and precision, can convert the inert mass of men
+outside the Christian world--the non-Christian races--as well as
+the coarse and depraved who are living in its midst, what proofs
+have we that this Christian public opinion has arisen and is able
+to replace force and render it unnecessary.
+
+"We must not give up force, by which the existing order is
+maintained, and by relying on the vague and impalpable influence
+of public opinion expose Christians to the risk of being pillaged,
+murdered, and outraged in every way by the savages inside and
+outside of civilized society.
+
+"Since, even supported by the use of force, we can hardly control
+the non-Christian elements which are always ready to pour down on
+us and to destroy all that has been gained by civilization, is it
+likely that public opinion could take the place of force and
+render us secure?  And besides, how are we to find the moment when
+public opinion has become strong enough to be able to replace the
+use of force?  To reject the use of force and trust to public
+opinion to defend us would be as insane as to remove all weapons
+of defense in a menagerie, and then to let loose all the lions and
+tigers, relying on the fact that the animals seemed peaceable when
+kept in their cages and held in check by red-hot irons.  And
+therefore people in power, who have been put in positions of
+authority by fate or by God, have not the right to run the risk,
+ruining all that has been gained by civilization, just because
+they want to try an experiment to see whether public opinion is or
+is not able to replace the protection given by authority."
+
+A French writer, forgotten now, Alphonse Karr, said somewhere,
+trying to show the impossibility of doing away with the death
+penalty: "Que messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner
+l'exemple."  Often have I heard this BON MOT repeated by men who
+thought that these words were a witty and convincing argument
+against the abolition of capital punishment.  And yet all the
+erroneousness of the argument of those who consider that
+governments cannot give up the use of force till all people are
+capable of doing the same, could not be more clearly expressed
+than it is in that epigram.
+
+"Let the murderers," say the champions of state violence, "set us
+the example by giving up murder and then we will give it up."  But
+the murderers say just the same, only with much more right. They
+say: "Let those who have undertaken to teach us and guide us set
+us the example of giving up legal murder, and then we will imitate
+them."  And they say this, not as a jest, but seriously, because
+it is the actual state of the case.
+
+"We cannot give up the use of violence, because we are surrounded
+by violent ruffians."  Nothing in our days hinders the progress of
+humanity and the establishment of the organization corresponding
+to its present development more than this false reasoning.  Those
+in authority are convinced that men are only guided and only
+progress through the use of force, and therefore they confidently
+make use of it to support the existing organization.  The existing
+order is maintained, not by force, but by public opinion, the
+action of which is disturbed by the use of force.  So that the
+effect of using force is to disturb and to weaken the very thing
+it tries to maintain.
+
+Violence, even in the most favorable case, when it is not used
+simply for some personal aims of those in power, always punishes
+under the one inelastic formula of the law what has long before
+been condemned by public opinion.  But there is this difference,
+that while public opinion censures and condemns all the acts
+opposed to the moral law, including the most varied cases in its
+reprobation, the law which rests on violence only condemns and
+punishes a certain very limited range of acts, and by so doing
+seems to justify all other acts of the same kind which do not come
+under its scope.
+
+Public opinion ever since the time of Moses has regarded
+covetousness, profligacy, and cruelty as wrong, and censured them
+accordingly.  And it condemns every kind of manifestation of
+covetousness, not only the appropriation of the property of others
+by force or fraud or trickery, but even the cruel abuse of wealth;
+it condemns every form of profligacy, whether with concubine,
+slave, divorced woman, or even one's own wife; it condemns every
+kind of cruelty, whether shown in blows, in ill-treatment, or in
+murder, not only of men, but even of animals.  The law resting on
+force only punishes certain forms of covetousness, such as robbery
+and swindling, certain forms of profligacy and cruelty, such as
+conjugal infidelity, murder, and wounding.  And in this way it
+seems to countenance all the manifestations of covetousness,
+profligacy, and cruelty which do not come under its narrow
+definition.
+
+But besides corrupting public opinion, the use of force leads men to the
+fatal conviction that they progress, not through the spiritual impulse
+which impels them to the attainment of truth and its realization in
+life, and which constitutes the only source of every progressive
+movement of humanity, but by means of violence, the very force which,
+far from leading men to truth, always carries them further away from it.
+This is a fatal error, because it leads men to neglect the chief force
+underlying their life--their spiritual activity--and to turn all their
+attention and energy to the use of violence, which is superficial,
+sluggish, and most generally pernicious in its action.
+
+They make the same mistake as men who, trying to set a steam
+engine in motion, should turn its wheels round with their hands,
+not suspecting that the underlying cause of its movement was the
+expansion of the steam, and not the motion of the wheels.  By
+turning the wheels by hand and by levers they could only produce a
+semblance of movement, and meantime they would be wrenching the
+wheels and so preventing their being fit for real movement.
+
+That is just what people are doing who think to make men advance
+by means of external force.
+
+They say that the Christian life cannot be established without the
+use of violence, because there are savage races outside the pale
+of Christian societies in Africa and in Asia (there are some who
+even represent the Chinese as a danger to civilization), and that
+in the midst of Christian societies there are savage, corrupt,
+and, according to the new theory of heredity, congenital
+criminals.  And violence, they say, is necessary to keep savages
+and criminals from annihilating our civilization.
+
+But these savages within and without Christian society, who are
+such a terror to us, have never been subjugated by violence, and
+are not subjugated by it now.  Nations have never subjugated other
+nations by violence alone.  If a nation which subjugated another
+was on a lower level of civilization, it has never happened that
+it succeeded in introducing its organization of life by violence.
+On the contrary, it was always forced to adopt the organization of
+life existing in the conquered nation.  If ever any of the nations
+conquered by force have been really subjugated, or even nearly so,
+it has always been by the action of public opinion, and never by
+violence, which only tends to drive a people to further rebellion.
+
+When whole nations have been subjugated by a new religion, and
+have become Christian or Mohammedan, such a conversion has never
+been brought about because the authorities made it obligatory (on
+the contrary, violence has much oftener acted in the opposite
+direction), but because public opinion made such a change
+inevitable.  Nations, on the contrary, who have been driven by
+force to accept the faith of their conquerors have always remained
+antagonistic to it.
+
+It is just the same with the savage elements existing in the midst
+of our civilized societies.  Neither the increased nor the
+diminished severity of punishment, nor the modifications of
+prisons, nor the increase of police will increase or diminish the
+number of criminals.  Their number will only be diminished by the
+change of the moral standard of society.  No severities could put
+an end to duels and vendettas in certain districts.  In spite of
+the number of Tcherkesses executed for robbery, they continue to
+be robbers from their youth up, for no maiden will marry a
+Tcherkess youth till he has given proof of his bravery by carrying
+off a horse, or at least a sheep.  If men cease to fight duels,
+and the Tcherkesses cease to be robbers, it will not be from fear
+of punishment (indeed, that invests the crime with additional
+charm for youth), but through a change in the moral standard of
+public opinion.  It is the same with all other crimes.  Force can
+never suppress what is sanctioned by public opinion.  On the
+contrary, public opinion need only be in direct opposition to
+force to neutralize the whole effect of the use of force.  It has
+always been so and always will be in every case of martyrdom.
+
+What would happen if force were not used against hostile nations
+and the criminal elements of society we do not know.  But we do
+know by prolonged experience that neither enemies nor criminals
+have been successfully suppressed by force.
+
+And indeed how could nations be subjugated by violence who are led
+by their whole education, their traditions, and even their
+religion to see the loftiest virtue in warring with their
+oppressors and fighting for freedom?  And how are we to suppress
+by force acts committed in the midst of our society which are
+regarded as crimes by the government and as daring exploits by the
+people?
+
+To exterminate such nations and such criminals by violence is
+possible, and indeed is done, but to subdue them is impossible.
+
+The sole guide which directs men and nations has always been and
+is the unseen, intangible, underlying force, the resultant of all
+the spiritual forces of a certain people, or of all humanity,
+which finds its outward expression in public opinion.
+
+The use of violence only weakens this force, hinders it and
+corrupts it, and tries to replace it by another which far from
+being conducive to the progress of humanity, is detrimental to it.
+
+To bring under the sway of Christianity all the savage nations
+outside the pale of the Christian world--all the Zulus, Mandchoos,
+and Chinese, whom many regard as savages--and the savages who live
+in our midst, there is only ONE MEANS.  That means is the
+propagation among these nations of the Christian ideal of society,
+which can only be realized by a Christian life, Christian actions,
+and Christian examples.  And meanwhile, though this is the ONE
+ONLY MEANS of gaining a hold over the people who have remained
+non-Christian, the men of our day set to work in the directly
+opposite fashion to attain this result.
+
+To bring under the sway of Christianity savage nations who do not
+attack us and whom we have therefore no excuse for oppressing, we
+ought before all things to leave them in peace, and in case we
+need or wish to enter into closer relations with them, we ought
+only to influence them by Christian manners and Christian
+teaching, setting them the example of the Christian virtues of
+patience, meekness, endurance, purity, brotherhood, and love.
+Instead of that we begin by establishing among them new markets
+for our commerce, with the sole aim of our own profit; then we
+appropriate their lands, i. e., rob them; then we sell them
+spirits, tobacco, and opium, i. e., corrupt them; then we
+establish our morals among them, teach them the use of violence
+and new methods of destruction, i, e., we teach them nothing but
+the animal law of strife, below which man cannot sink, and we do
+all we can to conceal from them all that is Christian in us.
+After this we send some dozens of missionaries prating to them of
+the hypocritical absurdities of the Church, and then quote the
+failure of our efforts to turn the heathen to Christianity as an
+incontrovertible proof of the impossibility of applying the truths
+of Christianity in practical life.
+
+It is just the same with the so-called criminals living in our
+midst.  To bring these people under the sway of Christianity there
+is one only means, that is, the Christian social ideal, which can
+only be realized among them by true Christian teaching and
+supported by a true example of the Christian life.  And to preach
+this Christian truth and to support it by Christian example we set
+up among them prisons, guillotines, gallows, preparations for
+murder; we diffuse among the common herd idolatrous superstitions
+to stupefy them; we sell them spirits, tobacco, and opium to
+brutalize them; we even organize legalized prostitution; we give
+land to those who do not need it; we make a display of senseless
+luxury in the midst of suffering poverty; we destroy the
+possibility of anything like a Christian public opinion, and
+studiously try to suppress what Christian public opinion is
+existing.  And then, after having ourselves assiduously corrupted
+men, we shut them up like wild beasts in places from which they
+cannot escape, and where they become still more brutalized, or
+else we kill them.  And these very men whom we have corrupted and
+brutalized by every means, we bring forward as a proof that one
+cannot deal with criminals except by brute force.
+
+We are just like ignorant doctors who put a man, recovering from
+illness by the force of nature, into the most unfavorable
+conditions of hygiene, and dose him with the most deleterious
+drugs, and then assert triumphantly that their hygiene and their
+drugs saved his life, when the patient would have been well long
+before if they had left him alone.
+
+Violence, which is held up as the means of supporting the
+Christian organization of life, not only fails to produce that
+effect, it even hinders the social organization of life from being
+what it might and ought to be.  The social organization is as good
+as it is not as a result of force, but in spite of it.
+
+And therefore the champions of the existing order are mistaken in
+arguing that since, even with the aid of force, the bad and
+non-Christian elements of humanity can hardly be kept from attacking us,
+the abolition of the use of force and the substitution of public opinion
+for it would leave humanity quite unprotected.
+
+They are mistaken, because force does not protect humanity, but,
+on the contrary, deprives it of the only possible means of really
+protecting itself, that is, the establishment and diffusion of a
+Christian public opinion.  Only by the suppression of violence
+will a Christian public opinion cease to be corrupted, and be
+enabled to be diffused without hindrance, and men will then turn
+their efforts in the spiritual direction by which alone they can
+advance.
+
+"But how are we to cast off the visible tangible protection of an
+armed policeman, and trust to something so intangible as public
+opinion?  Does it yet exist?  Moreover, the condition of things in
+which we are living now, we know, good or bad; we know its
+shortcomings and are used to it, we know what to do, and how to
+behave under present conditions.  But what will happen when we
+give it up and trust ourselves to something invisible and
+intangible, and altogether unknown?"
+
+The unknown world on which they are entering in renouncing their
+habitual ways of life appears itself as dreadful to them.  It is
+all very well to dread the unknown when our habitual position is
+sound and secure.  But our position is so far from being secure
+that we know, beyond all doubt, that we are standing on the brink
+of a precipice.  If we must be afraid let us be afraid of what is
+really alarming, and not what we imagine as alarming.
+
+Fearing to make the effort to detach ourselves from our perilous
+position because the future is not fully clear to us, we are like
+passengers in a foundering ship who, through being afraid to trust
+themselves to the boat which would carry them to the shore, shut
+themselves up in the cabin and refuse to come out of it; or like
+sheep, who, terrified by their barn being on fire, huddle in a
+corner and do not go out of the wide-open door.
+
+We are standing on the threshold of the murderous war of social
+revolution, terrific in its miseries, beside which, as those who
+are preparing it tell us, the horrors of 1793 will be child's
+play.  And can we talk of the danger threatening us from the
+warriors of Dahomey, the Zulus, and such, who live so far away and
+are not dreaming of attacking us, and from some thousands of
+swindlers, thieves, and murderers, brutalized and corrupted by
+ourselves, whose number is in no way lessened by all our
+sentences, prisons, and executions?
+
+Moreover this dread of the suppression of the visible protection
+of the policeman is essentially a sentiment of townspeople, that
+is, of people who are living in abnormal and artificial
+conditions.  People living in natural conditions of life, not in
+towns, but in the midst of nature, and carrying on the struggle
+with nature, live without this protection and know how little
+force can protect us from the real dangers with which we are
+surrounded.  There is something sickly in this dread, which is
+essentially dependent on the artificial conditions in which many
+of us live and have been brought up.
+
+A doctor, a specialist in insanity, told a story that one summer
+day when he was leaving the asylum, the lunatics accompanied him
+to the street door.  "Come for a walk in the town with me?" the
+doctor suggested to them.  The lunatics agreed, and a small band
+followed the doctor.  But the further they proceeded along the
+street where healthy people were freely moving about, the more
+timid they became, and they pressed closer and closer to the
+doctor, hindering him from walking.  At last they all began to beg
+him to take them back to the asylum, to their meaningless but
+customary way of life, to their keepers, to blows, strait
+waistcoats, and solitary cells.
+
+This is just how men of to-day huddle in terror and draw back to
+their irrational manner of life, their factories, law courts,
+prisons, executions, and wars, when Christianity calls them to
+liberty, to the free, rational life of the future coming age.
+
+People ask, "How will our security be guaranteed when the existing
+organization is suppressed?  What precisely will the new
+organization be that is to replace it?  So long as we do not know
+precisely how our life will be organized, we will not stir a step
+forward."
+
+An explorer going to an unknown country might as well ask for a
+detailed map of the country before he would start.
+
+If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know
+his future life in full detail, he would have nothing to live for.
+It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a programme of
+the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be
+the surest sign that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply
+rotating in the same place.
+
+The conditions of the new order of life cannot be known by us
+because we have to create them by our own labors.  That is all
+that life is, to learn the unknown, and to adapt our actions to
+this new knowledge.
+
+That is the life of each individual man, and that is the life of
+human societies and of humanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE HAS ALREADY ARISEN IN OUR
+SOCIETY, AND WILL INFALLIBLY PUT AN END TO THE PRESENT
+ORGANIZATION OF OUR LIFE BASED ON FORCE--WHEN THAT WILL BE.
+
+The Condition and Organization of our Society are Terrible, but they
+Rest only on Public Opinion, and can be Destroyed by it--Already
+Violence is Regarded from a Different Point of View; the Number of those
+who are Ready to Serve the Government is Diminishing; and even the
+Servants of Government are Ashamed of their Position, and so often Do
+Not Perform their Duties--These Facts are all Signs of the Rise of a
+Public Opinion, which Continually Growing will Lead to No One being
+Willing to Enter Government Service--Moreover, it Becomes More and More
+Evident that those Offices are of No Practical Use--Men already Begin to
+Understand the Futility of all Institutions Based on Violence, and if a
+Few already Understand it, All will One Day Understand it--The Day of
+Deliverance is Unknown, but it Depends on Men Themselves, on how far
+Each Man Lives According to the Light that is in Him.
+
+
+The position of Christian humanity with its prisons, galleys,
+gibbets, its factories and accumulation of capital, its taxes,
+churches, gin-palaces, licensed brothels, its ever-increasing
+armament and its millions of brutalized men, ready, like chained
+dogs, to attack anyone against whom their master incites them,
+would be terrible indeed if it were the product of violence, but
+it is pre-eminently the product of public opinion.  And what has
+been established by public opinion can be destroyed by public
+opinion--and, indeed, is being destroyed by public opinion.
+
+Money lavished by hundreds of millions, tens of millions of
+disciplined troops, weapons of astounding destructive power, all
+organizations carried to the highest point of perfection, a whole
+army of men charged with the task of deluding and hypnotizing the
+people, and all this, by means of electricity which annihilates
+distance, under the direct control of men who regard such an
+organization of society not only as necessary for profit, but even
+for self-preservation, and therefore exert every effort of their
+ingenuity to preserve it--what an invincible power it would seem!
+And yet we need only imagine for a moment what will really
+inevitably come to pass, that is, the Christian social standard
+replacing the heathen social standard and established with the
+same power and universality, and the majority of men as much
+ashamed of taking any part in violence or in profiting by it, as
+they are to-day of thieving, swindling, begging, and cowardice;
+and at once we see the whole of this complex, and seemingly
+powerful organization of society falls into ruins of itself
+without a struggle.
+
+And to bring this to pass, nothing new need be brought before
+men's minds.  Only let the mist, which veils from men's eyes the
+true meaning of certain acts of violence, pass away, and the
+Christian public opinion which is springing up would overpower the
+extinct public opinion which permitted and justified acts of
+violence.  People need only come to be as much ashamed to do deeds
+of violence, to assist in them or to profit by them, as they now
+are of being, or being reputed a swindler, a thief, a coward, or a
+beggar.  And already this change is beginning to take place.  We
+do not notice it just as we do not notice the movement of the
+earth, because we are moved together with everything around us.
+
+It is true that the organization of society remains in its
+principal features just as much an organization based on violence
+as it was one thousand years ago, and even in some respects,
+especially in the preparation for war and in war itself, it
+appears still more brutal.  But the rising Christian ideal, which
+must at a certain stage of development replace the heathen ideal
+of life, already makes its influence felt.  A dead tree stands
+apparently as firmly as ever--it may even seem firmer because it
+is harder--but it is rotten at the core, and soon must fall.  It
+is just so with the present order of society, based on force.  The
+external aspect is unchanged.  There is the same division of
+oppressors and oppressed, but their view of the significance and
+dignity of their respective positions is no longer what it once
+was.
+
+The oppressors, that is, those who take part in government, and
+those who profit by oppression, that is, the rich, no longer
+imagine, as they once did, that they are the elect of the world,
+and that they constitute the ideal of human happiness and
+greatness, to attain which was once the highest aim of the
+oppressed.
+
+Very often now it is not the oppressed who strive to attain the
+position of the oppressors, and try to imitate them, but on the
+contrary the oppressors who voluntarily abandon the advantages of
+their position, prefer the condition of the oppressed, and try to
+resemble them in the simplicity of their life.
+
+Not to speak of the duties and occupations now openly despised,
+such as that of spy, agent of secret police, moneylender, and
+publican, there are a great number of professions formerly
+regarded as honorable, such as those of police officials,
+courtiers, judges, and administrative functionaries, clergymen,
+military officers, speculators, and bankers, which are no longer
+considered desirable positions by everyone, and are even despised
+by a special circle of the most respected people.  There are
+already men who voluntarily abandon these professions which were
+once reckoned irreproachable, and prefer less lucrative callings
+which are in no way connected with the use of force.
+And there are even rich men who, not through religious sentiment,
+but simply through special sensitiveness to the social standard
+that is springing up, relinquish their inherited property,
+believing that a man can only justly consume what he has gained by
+his own labor.
+
+The position of a government official or of a rich man is no
+longer, as it once was, and still is among non-Christian peoples,
+regarded as necessarily honorable and deserving of respect, and
+under the special blessing of God.  The most delicate and moral
+people (they are generally also the most cultivated) avoid such
+positions and prefer more humble callings that are not dependent
+on the use of force.
+
+The best of our young people, at the age when they are still
+uncorrupted by life and are choosing a career, prefer the calling
+of doctor, engineer, teacher, artist, writer, or even that of
+simple farmer living on his own labor, to legal, administrative,
+clerical, and military positions in the pay of government, or to
+an idle existence living on their incomes.
+
+Monuments and memorials in these days are mostly not erected in
+honor of government dignitaries, or generals, or still less of
+rich men, but rather of artists, men of science, and inventors,
+persons who have nothing in common with the government, and often
+have even been in conflict with it.  They are the men whose
+praises are celebrated in poetry, who are honored by sculpture and
+received with triumphant jubilations.
+
+The best men of our day are all striving for such places of honor.
+Consequently the class from which the wealthy and the government
+officials are drawn grows less in number and lower in intelligence
+and education, and still more in moral qualities.  So that
+nowadays the wealthy class and men at the head of government do
+not constitute, as they did in former days, the ÉLITE of society;
+on the contrary, they are inferior to the middle class.
+
+In Russia and Turkey as in America and France, however often the
+government change its officials, the majority of them are self-seeking
+and corrupt, of so low a moral standard that they do not even come up
+the elementary requirements of common honesty expected by the
+government. One may often nowadays hear from persons in authority the
+naïve complaint that the best people are always, by some strange--as it
+seems to them--fatality, to be found in the camp of the opposition. As
+though men were to complain that those who accepted the office of
+hangman were--by some strange fatality--all persons of very little
+refinement or beauty of character.
+
+The most cultivated and refined people of our society are not
+nowadays to be found among the very rich, as used formerly to be
+the rule.  The rich are mostly coarse money grubbers, absorbed
+only, in increasing their hoard, generally by dishonest means, or
+else the degenerate heirs of such money grubbers, who, far from
+playing any prominent part in society, are mostly treated with
+general contempt.
+
+And besides the fact that the class from which the servants of
+government and the wealthy are drawn grows less in number and
+lower in caliber, they no longer themselves attach the same
+importance to their positions as they once did; often they are
+ashamed of the ignominy of their calling and do not perform the
+duties they are bound to perform in their position.  Kings and
+emperors scarcely govern at all; they scarcely ever decide upon an
+internal reform or a new departure in foreign politics.  They
+mostly leave the decision of such questions to government
+institutions or to public opinion.  All their duties are reduced
+to representing the unity and majesty of government.  And even
+this duty they perform less and less successfully.  The majority
+of them do not keep up their old unapproachable majesty, but
+become more and more democratized and even vulgarized, casting
+aside the external prestige that remained to them, and thereby
+destroying the very thing it was their function to maintain.
+
+It is just the same with the army.  Military officers of the
+highest rank, instead of encouraging in their soldiers the
+brutality and ferocity necessary for their work, diffuse education
+among the soldiers, inculcate humanity, and often even themselves
+share the socialistic ideas of the masses and denounce war.  In
+the last plots against the Russian Government many of the
+conspirators were in the army.  And the number of the disaffected
+in the army is always increasing.  And it often happens (there was
+a case, indeed, within the last few days) that when called upon to
+quell disturbances they refuse to fire upon the people.  Military
+exploits are openly reprobated by the military themselves, and are
+often the subject of jests among them.
+
+It is the same with judges and public prosecutors. The judges,
+whose duty it is to judge and condemn criminals, conduct the
+proceedings so as to whitewash them as far as possible.  So that
+the Russian Government, to procure the condemnation of those whom
+they want to punish, never intrust them to the ordinary tribunals,
+but have them tried before a court martial, which is only a
+parody of justice.  The prosecutors themselves often refuse to
+proceed, and even when they do proceed, often in spite of the law,
+really defend those they ought to be accusing.  The learned
+jurists whose business it is to justify the violence of authority,
+are more and more disposed to deny the right of punishment and to
+replace it by theories of irresponsibility and even of moral
+insanity, proposing to deal with those they call criminals by
+medical treatment only.
+
+Jailers and overseers of galleys generally become the champions of
+those whom they ought to torture.  Police officers and detectives
+are continually assisting the escape of those they ought to
+arrest.  The clergy preach tolerance, and even sometimes condemn
+the use of force, and the more educated among them try in their
+sermons to avoid the very deception which is the basis of their
+position and which it is their duty to support.  Executioners
+refuse to perform their functions, so that in Russia the death
+penalty cannot be carried out for want of executioners.  And in
+spite of all the advantages bestowed on these men, who are
+selected from convicts, there is a constantly diminishing number
+of volunteers for the post.  Governors, police  officials, tax
+collectors often have compassion on the people and try to find
+pretexts for not collecting the tax from them.  The rich are not
+at ease in spending their wealth only on themselves, and lavish
+it on works of public utility.  Landowners build schools and
+hospitals on their property, and some even give up the ownership
+of their land and transfer it to the cultivators, or establish
+communities upon it.  Millowners and manufacturers build
+hospitals, schools, savings banks, asylums, and  dwellings for
+their workpeople.  Some of them form co-operative associations in
+which they have shares on the same terms as the others.
+Capitalists expend a part of their capital on educational,
+artistic, philanthropic, and other public institutions.  And many,
+who are not equal to parting with their wealth in their lifetime,
+leave it in their wills to public institutions.
+
+All these phenomena might seem to be mere exceptions, except that
+they can all be referred to one common cause.  Just as one might
+fancy the first leaves on the budding trees in April were
+exceptional if we did not know that they all have a common cause,
+the spring, and that if we see the branches on some trees shooting
+and turning green, it is certain that it will soon be so with all.
+
+So it is with the manifestation of the Christian standard of
+opinion on force and all that is based on force.  If this standard
+already influences some, the most impressionable, and impels each
+in his own sphere to abandon advantages based on the use of force,
+then its influence will extend further and further till it
+transforms the whole order of men's actions and puts it into
+accord with the Christian ideal which is already a living force in
+the vanguard of humanity.
+
+And if there are now rulers, who do not decide on any step on
+their own authority, who try to be as unlike monarchs, and as like
+plain mortals as possible, who state their readiness to give up
+their prerogatives and become simply the first citizens of a
+republic; if there are already soldiers who realize all the sin
+and harm of war, and are not willing to fire on men either of
+their own or a foreign country; judges and prosecutors who do not
+like to try and to condemn criminals; priests, who abjure
+deception; tax-gatherers who try to perform as little as they can
+of their duties, and rich men renouncing their wealth--then the
+same thing will inevitably happen to other rulers, other soldiers,
+other judges, priests, tax-gatherers, and rich men.  And when
+there are no longer men willing to fill these offices, these
+offices themselves will disappear too.
+
+But this is not the only way in which public opinion is leading
+men to the abolition of the prevailing order and the substitution
+of a new order.  As the positions based on the rule of force
+become less attractive and fewer men are found willing to fill
+them, the more will their uselessness be apparent.
+
+Everywhere throughout the Christian world the same rulers, and the
+same governments, the same armies, the same law courts, the same
+tax-gatherers, the same priests, the same rich men, landowners,
+manufacturers, and capitalists, as ever, but the attitude of the
+world to them, and their attitude to themselves is altogether
+changed.
+
+The same sovereigns have still the same audiences and interviews,
+hunts and banquets, and balls and uniforms; there are the same
+diplomats and the same deliberations on alliances and wars; there
+are still the same parliaments, with the same debates on the
+Eastern question and Africa, on treaties and violations of
+treaties, and Home Rule and the eight-hour day; and one set of
+ministers replacing another in the same way, and the same speeches
+and the same incidents.  But for men who observe how one newspaper
+article has more effect on the position of affairs than dozens of
+royal audiences or parliamentary  sessions, it becomes more and
+more evident that these audiences and interviews and debates in
+parliaments do not direct the course of affairs, but something
+independent of all that, which cannot be concentrated in one
+place.
+
+The same generals and officers and soldiers, and cannons and
+fortresses, and reviews and maneuvers, but no war breaks out.  One
+year, ten, twenty years pass by.  And it becomes less and less
+possible to rely on the army for the pacification of riots, and
+more and more evident, consequently, that generals, and officers,
+and soldiers are only figures in solemn processions--objects of
+amusement for governments--a sort of immense--and far too
+expensive--CORPS DE BALLET.
+
+The same lawyers and judges, and the same assizes, but it becomes
+more and more evident that the civil courts decide cases on the
+most diverse grounds, but regardless of justice, and that criminal
+trials are quite senseless, because the punishments do not attain
+the objects aimed at by the judges themselves.  These institutions
+therefore serve no other purpose than to provide a means of
+livelihood for men who are not capable of doing anything more
+useful.
+
+The same priests and archbishops and churches and synods, but it
+becomes more and more evident that they have long ago ceased to
+believe in what they preach, and therefore they can convince no
+one of the necessity of believing what they don't believe
+themselves.
+
+The same tax collectors, but they are less and less capable of
+taking men's property from them by force, and it becomes more and
+more evident that people can collect all that is necessary by
+voluntary subscription without their aid.
+
+The same rich men, but it becomes more and more evident that they
+can only be of use by ceasing to administer their property in
+person and giving up to society the whole or at least a part of
+their wealth.
+
+And when all this has become absolutely evident to everyone, it
+will be natural for men to ask themselves: "But why should we keep
+and maintain all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of
+all sorts of senates and ministries, since nothing comes of all
+their debates and audiences?  Wouldn't it be better, as some
+humorist suggested, to make a queen of india-rubber?"
+
+And what good to us are these armies with their generals and bands
+and horses and drums?  And what need is there of them when there
+is no war, and no one wants to make war? and if there were a war,
+other nations would not let us gain any advantage from it; while
+the soldiers refuse to fire on their fellow-countrymen.
+
+And what is the use of these lawyers and judges who don't decide
+civil cases with justice and recognize themselves the uselessness
+of punishments in criminal cases?
+
+And what is the use of tax collectors who collect the taxes
+unwillingly, when it is easy to raise all that is wanted without
+them?
+
+What is the use of the clergy, who don't believe in what they
+preach?
+
+And what is the use of capital in the hands of private persons,
+when it can only be of use as the property of all?
+
+And when once people have asked themselves these questions they
+cannot help coming to some decision and ceasing to support all
+these institutions which are no longer of use.
+
+But even before those who support these institutions decide to
+abolish them, the men who occupy these positions will be reduced
+to the necessity of throwing them up.
+
+Public opinion more and more condemns the use of force, and
+therefore men are less and less willing to fill positions which
+rest on the use of force, and if they do occupy them, are less and
+less able to make use of force in them. And hence they must become
+more and more superfluous.
+
+I once took part in Moscow in a religious meeting which used to
+take place generally in the week after Easter near the church in
+the Ohotny Row.  A little knot of some twenty men were collected
+together on the pavement, engaged in serious religious discussion.
+At the same time there was a kind of concert going on in the
+buildings of the Court Club in the same street, and a police
+officer noticing the little group collected near the church sent a
+mounted policeman to disperse it.  It was absolutely unnecessary
+for the officer to disperse it.  A group of twenty men was no
+obstruction to anyone, but he had been standing there the whole
+morning, and he wanted to do something.  The policeman, a young
+fellow, with a resolute flourish of his right arm and a clink of
+his saber, came up to us and commanded us severely: "Move on!
+what's this meeting about?"  Everyone looked at the policeman, and
+one of the speakers, a quiet man in a peasant's dress, answered
+with a calm and gracious air, "We are speaking of serious matters,
+and there is no need for us to move on; you would do better, young
+man, to get off your horse and listen.  It might do you good";
+and turning round he continued his discourse.  The policeman
+turned his horse and went off without a word.
+
+That is just what should be done in all cases of violence.
+
+The officer was bored, he had nothing to do.  He had been put,
+poor fellow, in a position in which he had no choice but to give
+orders.  He was shut off from all human existence; he could do
+nothing but superintend and give orders, and give orders and
+superintend, though his superintendence and his orders served no
+useful purpose whatever.  And this is the position in which all
+these unlucky rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors,
+generals, officers, archbishops, priests, and even rich men find
+themselves to some extent already, and will find themselves
+altogether as time goes on.  They can do nothing but give orders,
+and they give orders and send their messengers, as the officer
+sent the policeman, to interfere with people.  And because the
+people they hinder turn to them and request them not to interfere,
+they fancy they are very useful indeed.
+
+But the time will come and is coming when it will be perfectly
+evident to everyone that they are not of any use at all, and only
+a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say gently
+and quietly to them, like my friend in the street meeting, "Pray
+don't interfere with us."  And all the messengers and those who
+send them too will be obliged to follow this good advice, that is
+to say, will leave off galloping about, with their arms akimbo,
+interfering with people, and getting off their horses and removing
+their spurs, will listen to what is being said, and mixing with
+others, will take their place with them in some real human work.
+
+The time will come and is inevitably coming when all institutions
+based on force will disappear through their uselessness,
+stupidity, and even inconvenience becoming obvious to all.
+
+The time must come when the men of our modern world who fill
+offices based upon violence will find themselves in the position
+of the emperor in Andersen's tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes,"
+when the child seeing the emperor undressed, cried in all
+simplicity, "Look, he is naked!"  And then all the rest, who had
+seen him and said nothing, could not help recognizing it too.
+
+The story is that there was once an emperor, very fond of new
+clothes.  And to him came two tailors, who promised to make him
+some extraordinary clothes.  The emperor engages them and they
+begin to sew at them, but they explain that the clothes have the
+extraordinary property of remaining invisible to anyone who is
+unfit for his position.  The courtiers come to look at the
+tailors' work and see nothing, for the men are plying their
+needles in empty space.  But remembering the extraordinary
+property of the clothes, they all declare they see them and are
+loud in their admiration.  The emperor does the same himself.  The
+day of the procession comes in which the emperor is to go out in
+his new clothes.  The emperor undresses and puts on his new
+clothes, that is to say, remains naked, and naked he walks through
+the town.  But remembering the magic property of the clothes, no
+one ventures to say that he has nothing on till a little child
+cries out: "Look, he is naked!"
+
+This will be exactly the situation of all who continue through
+inertia to fill offices which have long become useless directly
+someone who has no interest in concealing their uselessness
+exclaims in all simplicity: "But these people have been of no use
+to anyone for a long time past!"
+
+The condition of Christian humanity with its fortresses, cannons,
+dynamite, guns, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories,
+customs offices, and palaces is really terrible.  But still
+cannons and guns will not fire themselves, prisons will not shut
+men up of themselves, gallows will not hang them, churches will
+not delude them, nor customs offices hinder them, and palaces and
+factories are not built nor kept up of themselves.  All those
+things are the work of men.  If men come to understand that they
+ought not to do these things, then they will cease to be.  And
+already they are beginning to understand it.  Though all do not
+understand it yet, the advanced guard understand and the rest will
+follow them.  And the advanced guard cannot cease to understand
+what they have once understood; and what they understand the rest
+not only can but must inevitably understand hereafter.
+
+So that the prophecy that the time will come when men will be
+taught of God, will learn war no more, will beat their swords into
+plowshares and their spears into reaping-hooks, which means,
+translating it into our language, the fortresses, prisons,
+barracks, palaces, and churches will remain empty, and all the
+gibbets and guns and cannons will be left unused, is no longer a
+dream, but the definite new form of life to which mankind is
+approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.
+
+But when will it be?
+
+Eighteen  hundred  years ago  to this  question  Christ answered
+that the end of the world (that is, of the pagan organization of
+life) shall come when the tribulation of men is greater than it
+has ever been, and when the Gospel of the kingdom of God, that is,
+the possibility of a new organization of life,  shall be preached
+in the world unto all nations. (Matt. xxiv. 3-28.)  But of that
+day and hour knoweth no man but the Father only (Matt. xxiv. 3-6),
+said Christ.  For it may come any time, in such an hour as
+ye think not.
+
+To the question when this hour cometh Christ answers that we
+cannot know, but just because we cannot know when that hour is
+coming we ought to be always ready to meet it, just as the master
+ought to watch who guards his house from thieves, as the virgins
+ought to watch with lamps alight for the bridegroom; and further,
+we ought to work with all the powers given us to bring that hour
+to pass, as the servants ought to work with the talents intrusted
+to them. (Matt. xxiv. 43, and xxvi. 13, 14-30.)  And there could
+be no answer but this one.  Men cannot know when the day and the
+hour of the kingdom of God will come, because its coming depends
+on themselves alone.
+
+The answer is like that of the wise man who, when asked whether it
+was far to the town, answered, "Walk!"
+
+How can we tell whether it is far to the goal which humanity is
+approaching, when we do not know how men are going toward it,
+while it depends on them whether they go or do not go, stand
+still, slacken their pace or hasten it?  All we can know is what
+we who make up mankind ought to do, and not to do, to bring about
+the coming of the kingdom of God.  And that we all know.  And we
+need only each begin to do what we ought to do, we need only each
+live with all the light that is in us, to bring about at once the
+promised kingdom of God to which every man's heart is yearning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  XII.
+
+CONCLUSION--REPENT YE, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.
+
+1. Chance Meeting with a Train Carrying Soldiers to Restore Order
+Among the Famishing Peasants--Reason of the Expedition--How the
+Decisions of the Higher Authorities are Enforced in Cases of
+Insubordination on Part of the Peasants--What Happened at Orel, as
+an Example of How the Rights of the Propertied Classes are
+Maintained by Murder and Torture--All the Privileges of the
+Wealthy are Based on Similar Acts of Violence.
+
+2. The Elements that Made up the Force Sent to Toula, and the Conduct of
+the Men Composing it--How these Men Could Carry Out such Acts--The
+Explanation is Not to be Found in Ignorance, Conviction, Cruelty,
+Heartlessness, or Want of Moral Sense--They do these Things Because they
+are Necessary to Support the Existing Order, which they Consider it
+Every Man's Duty to Support--The Basis of this Conviction that the
+Existing Order is Necessary and Inevitable--In the Upper Classes this
+Conviction is Based on the Advantages of the Existing Order for
+Themselves--But what Forces Men of the Lower Classes to Believe in the
+Immutability of the Existing Order, from which they Derive no Advantage,
+and which they Aid in Maintaining, Facts Contrary to their
+Conscience?--This is the Result of the Lower Classes being Deluded by
+the Upper, Both as to the Inevitability of the Existing Order and the
+Lawfulness of the Acts of Violence Needed to Maintain it--Deception in
+General--Special Form of Deception in Regard to Military
+Service--Conscription.
+
+3. How can Men Allow that Murder is Permissible while they Preach
+Principles of Morality, and How can they Allow of the Existence in their
+Midst of a Military Organization of Physical Force which is a Constant
+Menace to Public Security?--It is only Allowed by the Upper Classes, who
+Profit by this Organization, Because their Privileges are Maintained by
+it--The Upper Classes Allow it, and the Lower Classes Carry it into
+Effect in Spite of their Consciousness of the Immorality of the Deeds of
+Violence, the More Readily Because Through the Arrangements of the
+Government the Moral Responsibility for such Deeds is Divided among a
+Great Number of Participants in it, and Everyone Throws the
+Responsibility on Someone Else--Moreover, the Sense of Moral
+Responsibility is Lost through the Delusion of Inequality, and the
+Consequent Intoxication of Power on the Part of Superiors, and Servility
+on the Part of Inferiors--The Condition of these Men, Acting against the
+Dictates of their Conscience, is Like that of Hypnotized Subjects Acting
+by Suggestion--The Difference between this Obedience to Government
+Suggestion, and Obedience to Public Opinion, and to the Guidance of Men
+of a Higher Moral Sense--The Existing Order of Society, which is the
+Result of an Extinct Public Opinion and is Inconsistent with the Already
+Existing Public Opinion of the Future, is only Maintained by the
+Stupefaction of the Conscience, Produced Spontaneously by Self-interest
+in the Upper Classes and Through Hypnotizing in the Lower Classes--The
+Conscience or the Common Sense of such Men may Awaken, and there are
+Examples of its Sudden Awakening, so that one can Never be Sure of the
+Deeds of Violence they are Prepared for--It Depends Entirely on the
+Point which the Sense of the Unlawfulness of Acts of Violence has
+Reached, and this Sense may Spontaneously Awaken in Men, or may be
+Reawakened by the Influence of Men of more Conscience.
+
+4. Everything Depends on the Strength of the Consciousness of
+Christian Truths in Each Individual Man--The Leading Men of Modern
+Times, however, do not Think it Necessary to Preach or Practice
+the Truths of Christianity, but Regard the Modification of the
+External Conditions of Existence within the Limit Imposed by
+Governments as Sufficient to Reform the Life of Humanity--On this
+Scientific Theory of Hypocrisy, which has Replaced the Hypocrisy
+of Religion, Men of the Wealthy Classes Base their Justification
+of their Position--Through this Hypocrisy they can Enjoy the
+Exclusive Privileges of their Position by Force and Fraud, and
+Still Pretend to be Christians to One Another and be Easy in their
+Minds--This Hypocrisy Allows Men who Preach Christianity to Take
+Part in Institutions Based on Violence--No External Reformation of
+Life will Render it Less Miserable--Its Misery the Result of
+Disunion Caused by Following Lies, not the Truth--Union only
+Possible in Truth--Hypocrisy Hinders this Union, since Hypocrites
+Conceal from themselves and Others the Truth they Know--Hypocrisy
+Turns all Reforms of Life to Evil--Hypocrisy Distorts the Idea of
+Good and Evil, and so Stands in the Way of the Progress of Men
+toward Perfection--Undisguised Criminals and Malefactors do Less
+Harm than those who Live by Legalized Violence, Disguised by
+Hypocrisy--All Men Feel the Iniquity of our Life, and would Long
+Ago have Transformed it if it had not been Dissimulated by
+Hypocrisy--But Seem to have Reached the Extreme Limits of
+Hypocrisy, and we Need only Make an Effort of Conscience to Awaken
+as from a Nightmare to a Different Reality.
+
+5. Can Man Make this Effort?--According to the Hypocritical Theory
+of the Day, Man is not Free to Transform his Life--Man is not Free
+in his Actions, but he is Free to Admit or to Deny the Truth he
+Knows--When Truth is Once Admitted, it Becomes the Basis of
+Action--Man's Threefold Relation to Truth--The Reason of the
+Apparent Insolubility of the Problem of Free Will--Man's Freedom
+Consists in the Recognition of the Truth Revealed to him.  There
+is no Other Freedom--Recognition of Truth Gives Freedom, and Shows
+the Path Along which, Willingly or Unwillingly by Mankind, Man
+Must Advance--The Recognition of Truth and Real Freedom Enables
+Man to Share in the Work of God, not as the Slave, but as the
+Creator of Life--Men Need only Make the Effort to Renounce all
+Thought of Bettering the External Conditions of Life and Bend all
+their Efforts to Recognizing and Preaching the Truth they Know, to
+put an End to the Existing Miserable State of Things, and to Enter
+upon the Kingdom of God so far as it is yet Accessible to Man--All
+that is Needed is to Make an End of Lying and Hypocrisy--But then
+what Awaits us in the Future?--What will Happen to Humanity if Men
+Follow the Dictates of their Conscience, and how can Life go on
+with the Conditions of Civilized Life to which we are Accustomed?
+--All Uneasiness on these Points may be Removed by the Reflection
+that Nothing True and Good can be Destroyed by the Realization of
+Truth, but will only be Freed from the Alloy of Falsehood.
+
+6. Our Life has Reached the Extreme Limit of Misery and Cannot be
+Improved by any Systems of Organization--All our Life and all our
+Institutions are Quite Meaningless--Are we Doing what God Wills of us by
+Preserving our Privileges and Duties to Government?--We are put in this
+Position not Because the World is so Made and it is Inevitable, but
+Because we Wish it to be so, Because it is to the Advantage of Some of
+us--Our Conscience is in Opposition to our Position and all our Conduct,
+and the Way Out of the Contradiction is to be Found in the Recognition
+of the Christian Truth: Do Not unto Others what you Would Not they
+should Do unto You--As our Duties to Self Must be Subordinated to our
+Duties to Others, so Must our Duties to Others be Subordinated to our
+Duties to God--The Only Way Out of our Position Lies, if not in
+Renouncing our Position and our Privileges, at Least in Recognizing our
+Sin and not Justifying it nor Disguising it--The Only Object of Life is
+to Learn the Truth and to Act on it--Acceptance of the Position and of
+State Action Deprives Life of all Object--It is God's Will that we
+should Serve Him in our Life, that is, that we should Bring About the
+Greatest Unity of all that has Life, a Unity only Possible in Truth.
+
+
+I was finishing this book, which I had been working at for two
+years, when I happened on the 9th of September to be traveling by
+rail through the governments of Toula and Riazan, where the
+peasants were starving last year and where the famine is even more
+severe now.  At one of the railway stations my train passed an
+extra train which was taking a troop of soldiers under the conduct
+of the governor of the province, together with muskets,
+cartridges, and rods, to flog and murder these same famishing
+peasants.
+
+The punishment of flogging by way of carrying the decrees of the
+authorities into effect has been more and more frequently adopted
+of late in Russia, in spite of the fact that corporal punishment
+was abolished by law thirty years ago.
+
+I had heard of this, I had even read in the newspapers of the
+fearful floggings which had been inflicted in Tchernigov, Tambov,
+Saratov, Astrakhan, and Orel, and of those of which the governor
+of Nijni-Novgorod, General Baranov, had boasted.  But I had never
+before happened to see men in the process of carrying out these
+punishments.
+
+And here I saw the spectacle of good Russians full of the
+Christian spirit traveling with guns and rods to torture and kill
+their starving brethren.  The reason for their expedition was as
+follows:
+
+On one of the estates of a rich landowner the peasants had common
+rights on the forest, and having always enjoyed these rights,
+regarded the forest as their own, or at least as theirs in common
+with the owner.  The landowner wished to keep the forest entirely
+to himself and began to fell the trees.  The peasants lodged a
+complaint.  The judges in the first instance gave an unjust
+decision (I say unjust on the authority of the lawyer and
+governor, who ought to understand the matter), and decided the
+case in favor of the landowner.  All the later decisions, even
+that of the senate, though they could see that the matter had been
+unjustly decided, confirmed the judgment and adjudged the forest
+to the landowner.  He began to cut down the trees, but the
+peasants, unable to believe that such obvious injustice could be
+done them by the higher authorities, did not submit to the
+decision and drove away the men sent to cut down the trees,
+declaring that the forest belonged to them and they would go to
+the Tzar before they would let them cut it down.
+
+The matter was referred to Petersburg, and the order was
+transmitted to the governor to carry the decision of the court
+into effect.  The governor asked for a troop of soldiers.  And
+here were the soldiers with bayonets and cartridges, and moreover,
+a supply of rods, expressly prepared for the purpose and heaped up
+in one of the trucks, going to carry the decision of the higher
+authorities into effect.
+
+The decisions of the higher authorities are carried into effect by
+means of murder or torture, or threats of one or the other,
+according to whether they offer resistance or not.
+
+In the first case if the peasants offer resistance the practice is
+in Russia, and it is the same everywhere where a state
+organization and private property exist, as follows.  The governor
+delivers an address in which he demands submission.  The excited
+crowd, generally deluded by their leaders, don't understand a word
+of what the representative of authority is saying in the pompous
+official language, and their excitement continues.  Then the
+governor announces that if they do not submit and disperse, he
+will be obliged to have recourse to force.  If the crowd does not
+disperse even on this, the governor gives the order to fire over
+the heads of the crowd.  If the crowd does not even then disperse,
+the governor gives the order to fire straight into the crowd; the
+soldiers fire and the killed and wounded fall about the street.
+Then the crowd usually runs away in all directions, and the troops
+at the governor's command take those who are supposed to be the
+ringleaders and lead them off under escort.  Then they pick up the
+dying, the wounded, and the dead, covered with blood, sometimes
+women and children among them.  The dead they bury and the wounded
+they carry to the hospital.  Those whom they regard as the
+ringleaders they take to the town hall and have them tried by a
+special court-martial.  And if they have had recourse to violence
+on their side, they are condemned to be hanged.  And then the
+gallows is erected.  And they solemnly strangle a few defenseless
+creatures.
+
+This is what has often been done in Russia, and is and must always
+be done where the social order is based on force.
+
+But in the second case, when the peasants do submit, something
+quite special, peculiar to Russia, takes place.  The governor
+arrives on the scene of action and delivers an harangue to the
+people, reproaching them for their insubordination, and either
+stations troops in the houses of the villages, where sometimes for
+a whole month the soldiers drain the resources of the peasants, or
+contenting himself with threats, he mercifully takes leave of the
+people, or what is the most frequent course, he announces that the
+ringleaders must be punished, and quite arbitrarily without any
+trial selects a certain number of men, regarded as ringleaders,
+and commands them to be flogged in his presence.
+
+In order to give an idea of how such things are done I will
+describe a proceeding of the kind which took place in Orel, and
+received the full approval of the highest authorities.
+
+This is what took place in Orel.  Just as here in the Toula
+province, a landlord wanted to appropriate the property of the
+peasants and just in the same way the peasants opposed it.  The
+matter in dispute was a fall of water, which irrigated the
+peasants' fields, and which the landowner wanted to cut off and
+divert to turn his mill.  The peasants rebelled against this being
+done.  The land owner laid a complaint before the district
+commander, who illegally (as was recognized later even by a legal
+decision) decided the matter in favor of the landowner, and
+allowed him to divert the water course.  The landowner sent
+workmen to dig the conduit by which the water was to be let off to
+turn the mill.  The peasants were indignant at this unjust
+decision, and sent their women to prevent the landowner's men from
+digging this conduit.  The women went to the dykes, overturned the
+carts, and drove away the men.  The landowner made a complaint
+against the women for thus taking the law into their own  hands.
+The district commander  made out an order that from  every house
+throughout the village one woman was to be taken and put in prison.
+The order was not easily executed.  For in every household there
+were several women, and it was impossible to know which one was to
+be arrested.  Consequently the police did not carry out the order.
+The landowner complained to the governor of the neglect on the
+part of the police, and the latter, without examining into the
+affair, gave the chief official of the police strict orders to
+carry out the instructions of the district commander without
+delay.  The police official, in obedience to his superior, went to
+the village and with the insolence peculiar to Russian officials
+ordered his policemen to take one woman out of each house.  But
+since there were more than one woman in each house, and there was
+no knowing which one was sentenced to imprisonment, disputes and
+opposition arose.  In spite of these disputes and opposition,
+however, the officer of police gave orders that some woman,
+whichever came first, should be taken from each household and led
+away to prison.  The peasants began to defend their wives and
+mothers, would not let them go, and beat the police and their
+officer.  This was a fresh and terrible crime: resistance was
+offered to the authorities.  A report of this new offense was sent
+to the town.  And so this governor--precisely as the governor of
+Toula was doing on that day--with a battalion of soldiers with
+guns and rods, hastily brought together by means of telegraphs and
+telephones and railways, proceeded by a special train to the scene
+of action, with a learned doctor whose duty it was to insure the
+flogging being of an hygienic character.  Herzen's prophecy of the
+modern Ghenghis Khan with his telegrams is completely realized by
+this governor.
+
+Before the town hall of the district were the soldiery, a
+battalion of police with their revolvers slung round them with red
+cords, the persons of most importance among the peasants, and the
+culprits.  A crowd of one thousand or more people were standing
+round.  The governor, on arriving, stepped out of his carriage,
+delivered a prepared harangue, and asked for the culprits and a
+bench.  The latter demand was at first not understood.  But a
+police constable whom the governor always took about with him, and
+who undertook to organize such executions--by no means exceptional
+in that province--explained that what was meant was a bench for
+flogging.  A bench was brought as well as the rods, and then the
+executioners were summoned (the latter had been selected
+beforehand from some horsestealers of the same village, as the
+soldiers refused the office).  When everything was ready, the
+governor ordered the first of the twelve culprits pointed out by
+the landowner as the most guilty to come forward.  The first to
+come forward was the head of a family, a man of forty who had
+always stood up manfully for the rights of his class, and
+therefore was held in the greatest esteem by all the villagers.
+He was led to the bench and stripped, and then ordered to lie
+down.
+
+The peasant attempted to supplicate for mercy, but seeing it was
+useless, he crossed himself and lay down.  Two police constables
+hastened to hold him down.  The learned doctor stood by, in
+readiness to give his aid and his medical science when they should
+be needed.  The convicts spit into their hands, brandished the
+rods, and began to flog.  It seemed, however, that the bench was
+too narrow, and it was difficult to keep the victim writhing in
+torture upon it.  Then the governor ordered them to bring another
+bench and to put a plank across them.  Soldiers, with their hands
+raised to their caps, and respectful murmurs of "Yes, your
+Excellency," hasten obediently to carry out this order.  Meanwhile
+the tortured man, half naked, pale and scowling, stood waiting,
+his eyes fixed on the ground and his teeth chattering.  When
+another bench had been brought they again made him lie down, and
+the convicted thieves again began to flog him.
+
+The victim's back and thighs and legs, and even his sides, became
+more and more covered with scars and wheals, and at every blow
+there came the sound of the deep groans which he could no longer
+restrain.  In the crowd standing round were heard the sobs of
+wives, mothers, children, the families of the tortured man and of
+all the others picked out for punishment.
+
+The miserable governor, intoxicated with power, was counting the
+strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes,
+while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to
+offer him a burning match to light them.  When more than fifty
+strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe,
+and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution
+to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific
+attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to
+his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that
+the man undergoing punishment had lost consciousness, and that, in
+accordance with the conclusions of science, to continue the
+punishment would endanger the victim's life.  But the miserable
+governor, now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, gave
+orders that the punishment should go on, and the flogging was
+continued up to seventy strokes, the number which the governor had
+for some reason fixed upon as necessary.  When the seventieth
+stroke had been reached, the governor said "Enough!  Next one!"
+And the mutilated victim, his back covered with blood, was lifted
+up and carried away unconscious, and another was led up.  The sobs
+and groans of the crowd grew louder.  But the representative of
+the state continued the torture.
+
+Thus they flogged each of them up to the twelfth, and each of them
+received seventy strokes.  They all implored mercy, shrieked and
+groaned.  The sobs and cries of the crowd of women grew louder and
+more heart-rending, and the men's faces grew darker and darker.
+But they were surrounded by troops, and the torture did not cease
+till it had reached the limit which had been fixed by the caprice
+of the miserable half-drunken and insane creature they called the
+governor.
+
+The officials, and officers, and soldiers not only assisted in it,
+but were even partly responsible for the affair, since by their
+presence they prevented any interference on the part of the crowd.
+
+When I inquired of one of the governors why they made use of this
+kind of torture when people had already submitted and soldiers
+were stationed in the village, he replied with the important air
+of a man who thoroughly understands all the subtleties of
+statecraft, that if the peasants were not thoroughly subdued by
+flogging, they would begin offering opposition to the decisions of
+authorities again.  When some of them had been thoroughly
+tortured, the authority of the state would be secured forever
+among them.
+
+And so that was why the Governor of Toula was going in his turn
+with his subordinate officials, officers, and soldiers to carry
+out a similar measure.  By precisely the same means, i. e., by
+murder and torture, obedience to the decision of the higher
+authorities was to be secured.  And this decision was to enable a
+young landowner, who had an income of one hundred thousand, to
+gain three thousand rubles more by stealing a forest from a whole
+community of cold and famished peasants, to spend it, in two or
+three weeks in the saloons of Moscow, Petersburg, or Paris.  That
+was what those people whom I met were going to do.
+
+After my thoughts had for two years been turned in the same
+direction, fate seemed expressly to have brought me face to face
+for the first time in my life with a fact which showed me
+absolutely unmistakably in practice what had long been clear to me
+in theory, that the organization of our society rests, not as
+people interested in maintaining the present order of things like
+to imagine, on certain principles of jurisprudence, but on simple
+brute force, on the murder and torture of men.
+
+People who own great estates or fortunes, or who receive great
+revenues drawn from the class who are in want even of necessities,
+the working class, as well as all those who like merchants,
+doctors, artists, clerks, learned professors, coachmen, cooks,
+writers, valets, and barristers, make their living about these
+rich people, like to believe that the privileges they enjoy are
+not the result of force, but of absolutely free and just
+interchange of services, and that their advantages, far from being
+gained by such punishments and murders as took place in Orel and
+several parts of Russia this year, and are always taking place all
+over Europe and America, have no kind of connection with these
+acts of violence.  They like to believe that their privileges
+exist apart and are the result of free contract among people; and
+that the violent cruelties perpetrated on the people also exist
+apart and are the result of some general judicial, political, or
+economical laws.  They try not to see that they all enjoy their
+privileges as a result of the same fact which forces the peasants
+who have tended the forest, and who are in the direct need of it
+for fuel, to give it up to a rich landowner who has taken no part
+in caring for its growth and has no need of it whatever--the fact,
+that is, that if they don't give it up they will be flogged or
+killed.
+
+And yet if it is clear that it was only by means of menaces, blows, or
+murder, that the mill in Orel was enabled to yield a larger income, or
+that the forest which the peasants had planted became the property of a
+landowner, it should be equally clear that all the other exclusive
+rights enjoyed by the rich, by robbing the poor of their necessities,
+rest on the same basis of violence. If the peasants, who need land to
+maintain their families, may not cultivate the land about their houses,
+but one man, a Russian, English, Austrian, or any other great landowner,
+possesses land enough to maintain a thousand families, though he does
+not cultivate it himself, and if a merchant profiting by the misery of
+the cultivators, taking corn from them at a third of its value, can keep
+this corn in his granaries with perfect security while men are starving
+all around him, and sell it again for three times its value to the very
+cultivators he bought it from, it is evident that all this too comes
+from the same cause. And if one man may not buy of another a commodity
+from the other side of a certain fixed line, called the frontier,
+without paying certain duties on it to men who have taken no part
+whatever in its production--and if men are driven to sell their last cow
+to pay taxes which the government distributes among its functionaries,
+and spends on maintaining soldiers to murder these very taxpayers--it
+would appear self-evident that all this does not come about as the
+result of any abstract laws, but is based on just what was done in Orel,
+and which may be done in Toula, and is done periodically in one form or
+another throughout the whole world wherever there is a government, and
+where there are rich and poor.
+
+Simply because torture and murder are not employed in every
+instance of oppression by force, those who enjoy the exclusive
+privileges of the ruling classes persuade themselves and others
+that their privileges are not based on torture and murder, but on
+some mysterious general causes, abstract laws, and so on.  Yet one
+would think it was perfectly clear that if men, who consider it
+unjust (and all the working classes do consider it so nowadays),
+still pay the principal part of the produce of their labor away to
+the capitalist and the landowner, and pay taxes, though they know
+to what a bad use these taxes are put, they do so not from
+recognition of abstract laws of which they have never heard, but
+only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they
+don't do so.
+
+And if there is no need to imprison, beat, and kill men every time
+the landlord collects his rents, every time those who are in want
+of bread have to pay a swindling merchant three times its value,
+every time the factory hand has to be content with a wage less
+than half of the profit made by the employer, and every time a
+poor man pays his last ruble in taxes, it is because so many men
+have been beaten and killed for trying to resist these demands,
+that the lesson has now been learnt very thoroughly.
+
+Just as a trained tiger, who does not eat meat put under his nose,
+and jumps over a stick at the word of command, does not act thus
+because he likes it, but because he remembers the red-hot irons or
+the fast with which he was punished every time he did not obey; so
+men submitting to what is disadvantageous or even ruinous to them,
+and considered by them as unjust, act thus because they remember
+what they suffered for resisting it.
+
+As for those who profit by the privileges gained by previous acts
+of violence, they often forget and like to forget how these
+privileges were obtained.  But one need only recall the facts of
+history, not the history of the exploits of different dynasties of
+rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the
+majority by a small number of men, to see that all the advantages
+the rich have over the poor are based on nothing but flogging,
+imprisonment, and murder.
+
+One need but reflect on the unceasing, persistent struggle of all
+to better their material position, which is the guiding motive of
+men of the present day, to be convinced that the advantages of the
+rich over the poor could never and can never be maintained by
+anything but force.
+
+There may be cases of oppression, of violence, and of punishments,
+though they are rare, the aim of which is not to secure the
+privileges of the propertied classes.  But one may confidently
+assert that in any society where, for every man living in ease,
+there are ten exhausted by labor, envious, covetous, and often
+suffering with their families from direct privation, all the
+privileges of the rich, all their luxuries and superfluities, are
+obtained and maintained only by tortures, imprisonment, and
+murder.
+
+The train I met on the 9th of September going with soldiers, guns,
+cartridges, and rods, to confirm the rich landowner in the
+possession of a small forest which he had taken from the starving
+peasants, which they were in the direst need of, and he was in no
+need of at all, was a striking proof of how men are capable of
+doing deeds directly opposed to their principles and their
+conscience without perceiving it.
+
+The special train consisted of one first-class carriage for the
+governor, the officials, and officers, and several luggage vans
+crammed full of soldiers.  The latter, smart young fellows in
+their clean new uniforms, were standing about in groups or sitting
+swinging their legs in the wide open doorways of the luggage vans.
+Some were smoking, nudging each other, joking, grinning, and
+laughing, others were munching sunflower seeds and spitting out
+the husks with an air of dignity.  Some of them ran along the
+platform to drink some water from a tub there, and when they met
+the officers they slackened their pace, made their stupid gesture
+of salutation, raising their hands to their heads with serious
+faces as though they were doing something of the greatest
+importance.  They kept their eyes on them till they had passed by
+them, and then set off running still more merrily, stamping their
+heels on the platform, laughing and chattering after the manner of
+healthy, good-natured young fellows, traveling in lively company.
+
+They were going to assist at the murder of their fathers or
+grandfathers just as if they were going on a party of pleasure, or
+at any rate on some quite ordinary business.
+
+The same impression was produced by the well-dressed functionaries
+and officers who were scattered about the platform and in the
+first-class carriage.  At a table covered with bottles was sitting
+the governor, who was responsible for the whole expedition,
+dressed in his half-military uniform and eating something while he
+chatted tranquilly about the weather with some acquaintances he
+had met, as though the business he was upon was of so simple and
+ordinary a character that it could not disturb his serenity and
+his interest in the change of weather.
+
+At a little distance from the table sat the general of the police.
+He was not taking any refreshment, and had an impenetrable bored
+expression, as though he were weary of the formalities to be gone
+through.  On all sides officers were bustling noisily about in
+their red uniforms trimmed with gold; one sat at a table finishing
+his bottle of beer, another stood at the buffet eating a cake, and
+brushing the crumbs off his uniform, threw down his money with a
+self-confident air; another was sauntering before the carriages of
+our train, staring at the faces of the women.
+
+All these men who were going to murder or to torture the famishing
+and defenseless creatures who provide them their sustenance had
+the air of men who knew very well that they were doing their duty,
+and some were even proud, were "glorying" in what they were doing.
+
+What is the meaning of it?
+
+All these people are within half an hour of reaching the place
+where, in order to provide a wealthy young man with three thousand
+rubles stolen from a whole community of famishing peasants, they
+may be forced to commit the most horrible acts one can conceive,
+to murder or torture, as was done in Orel, innocent beings, their
+brothers. And they see the place and time approaching with
+untroubled serenity.
+
+To say that all these government officials, officers, and soldiers
+do not know what is before them is impossible, for they are
+prepared for it.  The governor must have given directions about
+the rods, the officials must have sent an order for them,
+purchased them, and entered the item in their accounts.  The
+military officers have given and received orders about cartridges.
+They all know that they are going to torture, perhaps to kill,
+their famishing fellow-creatures, and that they must set to work
+within an hour.
+
+To say, as is usually said, and as they would themselves repeat,
+that they are acting from conviction of the necessity for
+supporting the state organization, would be a mistake.  For in the
+first place, these men have probably never even thought about
+state organization and the necessity of it; in the second place,
+they cannot possibly be convinced that the act in which they are
+taking part will tend to support rather than to ruin the state;
+and thirdly, in reality the majority, if not all, of these men,
+far from ever sacrificing their own pleasure or tranquillity to
+support the state, never let slip an opportunity of profiting at
+the expense of the state in every way they can increase their own
+pleasure and ease.  So that they are not acting thus for the sake
+of the abstract principle of the state.
+
+What is the meaning of it?
+
+Yet I know all these men.  If I don't know all of them personally,
+I know their characters pretty nearly, their past, and their way
+of thinking.  They certainly all have mothers, some of them wives
+and children.  They are certainly for the most part good, kind,
+even tender-hearted fellows, who hate every sort of cruelty, not
+to speak of murder; many of them would not kill or hurt an animal.
+Moreover, they are all professed Christians and regard all
+violence directed against the defenseless as base and disgraceful.
+
+Certainly not one of them would be capable in everyday life, for
+his own personal profit, of doing a hundredth part of what the
+Governor of Orel did.  Every one of them would be insulted at the
+supposition that he was capable of doing anything of the kind in
+private life.
+
+And yet they are within half an hour of reaching the place where
+they may be reduced to the inevitable necessity of committing this
+crime.
+
+What is the meaning of it?
+
+But it is not only these men who are going by train prepared for
+murder and torture.  How could the men who began the whole
+business, the landowner, the commissioner, the judges, and those
+who gave the order and are responsible for it, the ministers, the
+Tzar, who are also good men, professed Christians, how could they
+elaborate such a plan and assent to it, knowing its consequences?
+The spectators even, who took no part in the affair, how could
+they, who are indignant at the sight of any cruelty in private
+life, even the overtaxing of a horse, allow such a horrible deed
+to be perpetrated?  How was it they did not rise in indignation
+and bar the roads, shouting, "No; flog and kill starving men
+because they won't let their last possession be stolen from them
+without resistance, that we won't allow!"  But far from anyone
+doing this, the majority, even of those who were the cause of the
+affair, such as the commissioner, the landowner, the judge, and
+those who took part in it and arranged it, as the governor, the
+ministers, and the Tzar, are perfectly tranquil and do not even
+feel a prick of conscience.  And apparently all the men who are
+going to carry out this crime are equally undisturbed.
+
+The spectators, who one would suppose could have no personal
+interest in the affair, looked rather with sympathy than with
+disapproval at all these people preparing to carry out this
+infamous action.  In the same compartment with me was a wood
+merchant, who had risen from a peasant.  He openly expressed aloud
+his sympathy with such punishments.  "They can't disobey the
+authorities," he said; "that's what the authorities are for.  Let
+them have a lesson; send their fleas flying!  They'll give over
+making commotions, I warrant you.  That's what they want."
+
+What is the meaning of it?
+
+It is not possible to say that all these people who have provoked
+or aided or allowed this deed are such worthless creatures that,
+knowing all the infamy of what they are doing, they do it against
+their principles, some for pay and for profit, others through fear
+of punishment.  All of them in certain circumstances know how to
+stand up for their principles.  Not one of these officials would
+steal a purse, read another man's letter, or put up with an
+affront without demanding satisfaction.  Not one of these officers
+would consent to cheat at cards, would refuse to pay a debt of
+honor, would betray a comrade, run away on the field of battle, or
+desert the flag.  Not one of these soldiers would spit out the
+holy sacrament or eat meat on Good Friday.  All these men are
+ready to face any kind of privation, suffering, or danger rather
+than consent to do what they regard as wrong.  They have therefore
+the strength to resist doing what is against their principles.
+
+It is even less possible to assert that all these men are such
+brutes that it is natural and not distasteful to them to do such
+deeds.  One need only talk to these people a little to see that
+all of them, the landowner even, and the judge, and the minister
+and the Tzar and the government, the officers and the soldiers,
+not only disapprove of such things in the depth of their soul, but
+suffer from the consciousness of their participation in them when
+they recollect what they imply.  But they try not to think about
+it.
+
+One need only talk to any of these who are taking part in the
+affair from the landowner to the lowest policeman or soldier to
+see that in the depth of their soul they all know it is a wicked
+thing, that it would be better to have nothing to do with it, and
+are suffering from the knowledge.
+
+A lady of liberal views, who was traveling in the same train with
+us, seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class saloon
+and learning the object of the expedition, began, intentionally
+raising her voice so that they should hear, to abuse the existing
+order of things and to cry shame on men who would take part in
+such proceedings.  Everyone felt awkward, none knew where to look,
+but no one contradicted her.  They tried to look as though such
+remarks were not worth answering.  But one could see by their
+faces and their averted eyes that they were ashamed.  I noticed
+the same thing in the soldiers.  They too knew that what they were
+sent to do was a shameful thing, but they did not want to think
+about what was before them.
+
+When the wood merchant, as I suspect insincerely only to show that
+he was a man of education, began to speak of the necessity of such
+measures, the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him,
+scowling and pretending not to hear.
+
+All the men who, like the landowner, the commissioner, the
+minister, and the Tzar, were responsible for the perpetration of
+this act, as well as those who were now going to execute it, and
+even those who were mere spectators of it, knew that it was a
+wickedness, and were ashamed of taking any share in it, and even
+of being present at it.
+
+Then why did they do it, or allow it to be done?
+
+Ask them the question.  And the landowner who started the affair,
+and the judge who pronounced a clearly unjust even though formally
+legal decision, and those who commanded the execution of the
+decision, and those who, like the policemen, soldiers, and
+peasants, will execute the deed with their own hands, flogging and
+killing their brothers, all who have devised, abetted, decreed,
+executed, or allowed such crimes, will make substantially the same
+reply.
+
+The authorities, those who have started, devised, and decreed the
+matter, will say that such acts are necessary for the maintenance
+of the existing order; the maintenance of the existing order is
+necessary for the welfare of the country and of humanity, for the
+possibility of social existence and human progress.
+
+Men of the poorer class, peasants and soldiers, who will have to
+execute the deed of violence with their own hands, say that they
+do so because it is the command of their superior authority, and
+the superior authority knows what he is about.  That those are in
+authority who ought to be in authority, and that they know what
+they are doing appears to them a truth of which there can be no
+doubt.  If they could admit the possibility of mistake or error,
+it would only be in functionaries of a lower grade; the highest
+authority on which all the rest depends seems to them immaculate
+beyond suspicion.
+
+Though expressing the motives of their conduct differently, both
+those in command and their subordinates are agreed in saying that
+they act thus because the existing order is the order which must
+and ought to exist at the present time, and that therefore to
+support it is the sacred duty of every man.
+
+On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore immutability of
+the existing order, all who take part in acts of violence on the
+part of government base the argument always advanced in their
+justification.  "Since the existing order is immutable," they say,
+"the refusal of a single individual to perform the duties laid
+upon him will effect no change in things, and will only mean that
+some other man will be put in his place who may do the work worse,
+that is to say, more cruelly, to the still greater injury of the
+victims of the act of violence."
+
+This conviction that the existing order is the necessary and
+therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for every man
+to support, enables good men, of high principles in private life,
+to take part with conscience more or less untroubled in crimes
+such as that perpetrated in Orel, and that which the men in the
+Toula train were going to perpetrate.
+
+But what is this conviction based on?  It is easy to understand
+that the landowner prefers to believe that the existing order is
+inevitable and immutable, because this existing order secures him
+an income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by means of
+which he can lead his habitual indolent and luxurious life.
+
+It is easy to understand that the judge readily believes in the
+necessity of an order of things through which he receives a wage
+fifty times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and
+the same applies to all the higher officials.  It is only under
+the existing RÉGIME that as governor, prosecutor, senator, members
+of the various councils, they can receive their several thousands
+of rubles a year, without which they and their families would at
+once sink into ruin, since if it were not for the position they
+occupy they would never by their own abilities, industry, or
+acquirements get a thousandth part of their salaries.  The
+minister, the Tzar, and all the higher authorities are in the same
+position.  The only distinction is that the higher and the more
+exceptional their position, the more necessary it is for them to
+believe that the existing order is the only possible order of
+things.  For without it they would not only be unable to gain an
+equal position, but would be found to fall lower than all other
+people.  A man who has of his own free will entered the police
+force at a wage of ten rubles, which he could easily earn in any
+other position, is hardly dependent on the preservation of the
+existing RÉGIME, and so he may not believe in its immutability.
+But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for his post, and
+knows that there are thousands of people round him who would like
+to dethrone him and take his place, who knows that he will never
+receive such a revenue or so much honor in any other position, who
+knows, in most cases through his more or less despotic rule, that
+if he were dethroned he would have to answer for all his abuse of
+power--he cannot but believe in the necessity and even sacredness
+of the existing order.  The higher and the more profitable a man's
+position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more terrible and
+dangerous a fall from it for him, the more firmly the man believes
+in the existing order, and therefore with the more ease of
+conscience can such a man perpetrate cruel and wicked acts, as
+though they were not in his own interest, but for the maintenance
+of that order.
+
+This is the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions
+more profitable than they could occupy except for the present
+RÉGIME, from the lowest police officer to the Tzar.  All of them
+are more or less convinced that the existing order is immutable,
+because--the chief consideration--it is to their advantage.  But
+the peasants, the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social
+scale, who have no kind of advantage from the existing order, who
+are in the very lowest position of subjection and humiliation,
+what forces them to believe that the existing order in which they
+are in their humble and disadvantageous position is the order
+which ought to exist, and which they ought to support even at the
+cost of evil actions contrary to their conscience?
+
+What forces these men to the false reasoning that the existing
+order is unchanging, and that therefore they ought to support it,
+when it is so obvious, on the contrary, that it is only unchanging
+because they themselves support it?
+
+What forces these peasants, taken only yesterday from the plow and
+dressed in ugly and unseemly costumes with blue collars and gilt
+buttons, to go with guns and sabers and murder their famishing
+fathers and brothers?  They gain no kind of advantage and can be
+in no fear of losing the position they occupy, because it is worse
+than that from which they have been taken.
+
+The persons in authority of the higher orders--landowners,
+merchants, judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and
+officers--take part in such doings because the existing order is
+to their advantage.  In other respects they are often good and
+kind-hearted men, and they are more able to take part in such
+doings because their share in them is limited to suggestions,
+decisions, and orders.  These persons in authority never do
+themselves what they suggest, decide, or command to be done.  For
+the most part they do not even see how all the atrocious deeds
+they have suggested and authorized are carried out.  But the
+unfortunate men of the lower orders, who gain no kind of advantage
+from the existing RÉGIME, but, on the contrary, are treated with
+the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people with their
+own hands from their families, handcuffing them, throwing them in
+prison, guarding them, shooting them.
+
+Why do they do it?  What forces them to believe that the existing
+order is unchanging and they must support it?
+
+All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the
+handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own hands. If
+there were no soldiers or armed policemen, ready to kill or outrage
+anyone as they are ordered, not one of those people who sign sentences
+of death, imprisonment, or galley-slavery for life would make up his
+mind to hang, imprison, or torture a thousandth part of those whom,
+quietly sitting in his study, he now orders to be tortured in all kinds
+of ways, simply because he does not see it nor do it himself, but only
+gets it done at a distance by these servile tools.
+
+All the acts of injustice and cruelty which are committed in the
+ordinary course of daily life have only become habitual because
+there are these men always ready to carry out such acts of
+injustice and cruelty.  If it were not for them, far from anyone
+using violence against the immense masses who are now ill-treated,
+those who now command their punishment would not venture to
+sentence them, would not even dare to dream of the sentences they
+decree with such easy confidence at present.  And if it were not
+for these men, ready to kill or torture anyone at their
+commander's will, no one would dare to claim, as all the idle
+landowners claim with such assurance, that a piece of land,
+surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from want of land,
+is the property of a man who does not cultivate it, or that stores
+of corn taken by swindling from the peasants ought to remain
+untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger because the
+merchants must make their profit.  If it were not for these
+servile instruments at the disposal of the authorities, it could
+never have entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants
+of the forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they
+are entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing people,
+the price of their oppression; least of all could anyone dream of
+killing or exiling men for exposing falsehood and telling the
+truth.  All this can only be done because the authorities are
+confidently assured that they have always these servile tools at
+hand, ready to carry all their demands into effect by means of
+torture and murder.
+
+All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the lowest
+commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can only be
+explained by the intoxicating effect of their absolute power over
+these slaves.  All force, therefore, rests on these men, who carry
+out the deeds of violence with their own hands, the men who serve
+in the police or the army, especially the army, for the police
+only venture to do their work because the army is at their back.
+
+What, then, has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the
+whole thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do
+these atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought them
+to accept the amazing delusion that the existing order,
+unprofitable, ruinous, and fatal as it is for them, is the order
+which ought to exist?
+
+Who has led them into this amazing delusion?
+
+They can never have persuaded themselves that they ought to do what is
+against their conscience, and also the source of misery and ruin for
+themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-tenths of the
+population.
+
+"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment:
+'Thou shalt not kill'?"  I have often inquired of different
+soldiers.  And I always drove them to embarrassment and confusion
+by reminding them of what they did not want to think about.  They
+knew they were bound by the law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and
+knew too that they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had
+never reflected on the contradiction between these duties.  The
+drift of the timid answers I received to this question was always
+approximately this: that killing in war and executing criminals by
+command of the government are not included in the general
+prohibition of murder.  But when I said this distinction was not
+made in the law of God, and reminded them of the Christian duty of
+fraternity, forgiveness of injuries, and love, which could not be
+reconciled with murder, the peasants usually agreed, but in their
+turn began to ask me questions.  "How does it happen," they
+inquired, "that the government [which according to their ideas
+cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and orders criminals to be
+executed."  When I answered that the government does wrong in
+giving such orders, the peasants fell into still greater
+confusion, and either broke off the conversation or else got angry
+with me.
+
+"They must have found a law for it.  The archbishops know as much
+about it as we do, I should hope," a Russian soldier once observed
+to me.  And in saying this the soldier obviously set his mind at
+rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a
+law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their
+descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing
+himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or
+conundrum on my part.
+
+Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by
+revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of
+the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us,
+and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons,
+that is, murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others.
+Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin,
+whoever are the victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery,
+theft, or any other.  At the same time from their childhood up men
+see that murder is not only permitted, but even sanctioned by the
+blessing of those whom they are accustomed to regard as their
+divinely appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders
+with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear murderous
+arms, and demanding of others in the name of the laws of the
+country, and even of God, that they should take part in murder.
+Men see that there is some inconsistency here, but not being able
+to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this apparent
+inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance.  The very
+grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in
+this conviction.
+
+They cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the
+educated classes, could so confidently preach two such opposed
+principles as the law of Christ and murder.  A simple uncorrupted
+youth cannot imagine that those who stand so high in his opinion,
+whom he regards as holy or learned men, could for any object
+whatever mislead him so shamefully.  But this is just what has
+always been and always is done to him.  It is done (1) by
+instilling, by example and direct instruction, from childhood up,
+into the working people, who have not time to study moral and
+religious questions for themselves, the idea that torture and
+murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain
+objects of state, torture and murder are not only admissible, but
+ought to be employed; and (2) by instilling into certain of the
+people, who have either voluntarily enlisted or been taken by
+compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of murder
+and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a
+glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.
+
+The general delusion is diffused among all people by means of the
+catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in use for the
+compulsory education of children.  In them it is stated that
+violence, that is, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder
+in civil or foreign war in the defense and maintenance of the
+existing state organization (whatever that may be, absolute or
+limited monarchy, convention, consulate, empire of this or that
+Napoleon or Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, commune or
+republic) is absolutely lawful and not opposed to morality and
+Christianity.
+
+This is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools.  And
+men are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up, live and
+die in that conviction without once entertaining a doubt about it.
+
+This is one form of deception, the general deception instilled
+into everyone, but there is another special deception practiced
+upon the soldiers or police who are picked out by one means or
+another to do the torturing and murdering necessary to defend and
+maintain the existing RÉGIME.
+
+In all military instructions there appears in one form or another
+what is expressed in the Russian military code in the following
+words:
+
+ARTICLE 87.  To carry out exactly and without comment the orders
+of a superior officer means: to carry out an order received from a
+superior officer exactly without considering whether it is good or
+not, and whether it is possible to carry it out.  The superior
+officer is responsible for the consequences of the order he gives.
+
+ARTICLE 88.  The subordinate ought never to refuse to carry out
+the orders of a superior officer except when he sees clearly that
+in carrying out his superior officer's command, he breaks [the law
+of God, one involuntarily expects; not at all] HIS OATH OF
+FIDELITY AND ALLEGIANCE TO THE TZAR.
+
+It is here said that the man who is a soldier can and ought to
+carry out all the orders of his superior without exception.  And
+as these orders for the most part involve murder, it follows that
+he ought to break all the laws of God and man.  The one law he may
+not break is that of fidelity and allegiance to the man who
+happens at a given moment to be in power.
+
+Precisely the same thing is said in other words in all codes of
+military instruction.  And it could not be otherwise, since the
+whole power of the army and the state is based in reality on this
+delusive emancipation of men from their duty to God and their
+conscience, and the substitution of duty to their superior officer
+for all other duties.
+
+This, then, is the foundation of the belief of the lower classes
+that the existing RÉGIME so fatal for them is the RÉGIME which
+ought to exist, and which they ought therefore to support even by
+torture and murder.
+
+This belief is founded on a conscious deception practiced on them
+by the higher classes.
+
+And it cannot be otherwise.  To compel the lower classes, which
+are more numerous, to oppress and ill treat themselves, even at
+the cost of actions opposed to their conscience, it was necessary
+to deceive them.  And it has been done accordingly.
+
+Not many days ago I saw once more this shameless deception being
+openly practiced, and once more I marveled that it could be
+practiced so easily and impudently.
+
+At the beginning of November, as I was passing through Toula, I
+saw once again at the gates of the Zemsky Courthouse the crowd of
+peasants I had so often seen before, and heard the drunken shouts
+of the men mingled with the pitiful lamentations of their wives
+and mothers.  It was the recruiting session.
+
+I can never pass by the spectacle.  It attracts me by a kind of
+fascination of repulsion.  I again went into the crowd, took my
+stand among the peasants, looked about and asked questions.  And
+once again I was amazed that this hideous crime can be perpetrated
+so easily in broad daylight and in the midst of a large town.
+
+As the custom is every year, in all the villages and hamlets of
+the one hundred millions of Russians, on the 1st of November, the
+village elders had assembled the young men inscribed on the lists,
+often their own sons among them, and had brought them to the town.
+
+On the road the recruits have been drinking without intermission,
+unchecked by the elders, who feel that going on such an insane
+errand, abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing all they
+hold sacred in order to become a senseless instrument of
+destruction, would be too agonizing if they were not stupefied
+with spirits.
+
+And so they have come, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting and
+scuffling with one another.  They have spent the night in taverns.
+In the morning they have slept off their drunkenness and have
+gathered together at the Zemsky Court-house.
+
+Some of them, in new sheepskin pelisses, with knitted scarves
+round their necks, their eyes swollen from drinking, are shouting
+wildly to one another to show their courage; others, crowded near
+the door, are quietly and mournfully waiting their turn, between
+their weeping wives and mothers (I had chanced upon the day of the
+actual enrolling, that is, the examination of those whose names
+are on the list); others meantime were crowding into the hall of
+the recruiting office.
+
+Inside the office the work was going on rapidly.  The door is
+opened and the guard calls Piotr Sidorov.  Piotr Sidorov starts,
+crosses himself, and goes into a little room with a glass door,
+where the conscripts undress.  A comrade of Piotr Sidorov's, who
+has just been passed for service, and come naked out of the
+revision office, is dressing hurriedly, his teeth chattering.
+Sidorov has already heard the news, and can see from his face too
+that he has been taken.  He wants to ask him questions, but they
+hurry him and tell him to make haste and undress.  He throws off
+his pelisse, slips his boots off his feet, takes off his waistcoat
+and draws his shirt over his head, and naked, trembling all over,
+and exhaling an odor of tobacco, spirits, and sweat, goes into the
+revision office, not knowing what to do with his brawny bare arms.
+
+Directly facing him in the revision office hangs in a great gold
+frame a portrait of the Tzar in full uniform with decorations, and
+in the corner a little portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown
+of thorns.  In the middle of the room is a table covered with
+green cloth, on which there are papers lying and a three-cornered
+ornament surmounted by an eagle--the zertzal. Round the table are
+sitting the revising officers, looking collected and indifferent.
+One is smoking a cigarette; another is looking through some
+papers.  Directly Sidorov comes in, a guard goes up to him, places
+him under the measuring frame, raising him under his chin, and
+straightening his legs.
+
+The man with the cigarette--he is the doctor--comes up, and without
+looking at the recruit's face, but somewhere beyond it, feels his body
+over with an air of disgust, measures him, tests him, tells the guard to
+open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to speak. Someone notes something
+down. At last without having once looked him in the face the doctor
+says, "Right. Next one!" and with a weary air sits down again at the
+table. The soldiers again hustle and hurry the lad. He somehow gets into
+his trousers, wraps his feet in rags, puts on his boots, looks for his
+scarf and cap, and bundles his pelisse under his arm. Then they lead him
+into the main hall, shutting him off apart from the rest by a bench,
+behind which all the conscripts who have been passed for service are
+waiting. Another village lad like himself, but from a distant province,
+now a soldier armed with a gun with a sharp-pointed bayonet at the end,
+keeps watch over him, ready to run him through the body if he should
+think of trying to escape.
+
+Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives, hustled by the
+police, are pressing round the doors to hear whose lad has been
+taken, whose is let off.  One of the rejected comes out and
+announces that Piotr is taken, and at once a shrill cry is heard
+from Piotr's young wife, for whom this word "taken" means
+separation for four or five years, the life of a soldier's wife as
+a servant, often a prostitute.
+
+But here comes a man along the street with flowing hair and in a
+peculiar dress, who gets out of his droskhy and goes into the
+Zemsky Court-house.  The police clear a way for him through the
+crowd.  It is the "reverend father" come to administer the oath.
+And this "father," who has been persuaded that he is specially and
+exclusively devoted to the service of Christ, and who, for the
+most part, does not himself see the deception in which he lives,
+goes into the hall where the conscripts are waiting.  He throws
+round him a kind of curtain of brocade, pulls his long hair out
+over it, opens the very Gospel in which swearing is forbidden,
+takes the cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified
+because he would not do what this false servant of his is telling
+men to do, and puts them on the lectern.  And all these unhappy,
+defenseless, and deluded lads repeat after him the lie, which he
+utters with the assurance of familiarity.
+
+He reads and they repeat after him:
+
+"I promise and swear by Almighty God upon his holy Gospel," etc.,
+"to defend," etc., and that is, to murder anyone I am told to, and
+to do everything I am told by men I know nothing of, and who care
+nothing for me except as an instrument for perpetrating the crimes
+by which they are kept in their position of power, and my brothers
+in their condition of misery.  All the conscripts repeat these
+ferocious  words without thinking.  And  then  the so-called
+"father" goes away with a sense of having correctly and
+conscientiously done his duty.  And all these poor deluded lads
+believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible words which
+they have just uttered set them free for the whole time of their
+service from their duties as men, and lay upon them fresh and more
+binding duties as soldiers.
+
+And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out to the
+deceiving and the deceived: "Think what you are doing; this is the
+basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies only, but souls too, are
+destroyed."
+
+No one does this.  On the contrary, when all have been enrolled,
+and they are to be let out again, the military officer goes with a
+confident and majestic air into the hall where the drunken,
+cheated lads are shut up, and cries in a bold, military voice:
+"Your health, my lads!  I congratulate you on 'serving the Tzar!'"
+And they, poor fellows (someone has given them a hint beforehand),
+mutter awkwardly, their voices thick with drink, something to the
+effect that they are glad.
+
+Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives is standing at
+the doors waiting.  The women keep their tearful eyes fixed on the
+doors.  They open at last, and out come the conscripts, unsteady,
+but trying to put a good face on it.  Here are Piotr and Vania and
+Makar trying not to look their dear ones in the face.  Nothing is
+heard but the wailing of the wives and mothers.  Some of the lads
+embrace them and weep with them, others make a show of courage,
+and others try to comfort them.
+
+The wives and mothers, knowing that they will be left for three,
+four, or five years without their breadwinners, weep and rehearse
+their woes aloud.  The fathers say little.  They only utter a
+clucking sound with their tongues and sigh mournfully, knowing
+that they will see no more of the steady lads they have reared and
+trained to help them, that they will come back not the same quiet
+hard-working laborers, but for the most part conceited and
+demoralized, unfitted for their simple life.
+
+And then all the crowd get into their sledges again and move away
+down the street to the taverns and pot-houses, and louder than
+ever sounds the medley of singing and sobbing, drunken shouts, and
+the wailing of the wives and mothers, the sounds of the accordeon
+and oaths.  They all turn into the taverns, whose revenues go to
+the government, and the drinking bout begins, which stifles their
+sense of the wrong which is being done them.
+
+For two or three weeks they go on living at home, and most of that
+time they are "jaunting," that is, drinking.
+
+On a fixed day they collect them, drive them together like a flock
+of sheep, and begin to train them in the military exercises and
+drill.  Their teachers are fellows like themselves, only deceived
+and brutalized two or three years sooner.  The means of
+instruction are: deception, stupefaction, blows, and vodka.  And
+before a year has passed these good, intelligent, healthy-minded
+lads will be as brutal beings as their instructors.
+
+"Come, now, suppose your father were arrested and tried to make
+his escape?" I asked a young soldier.
+
+"I should run him through with my bayonet," he answered with the
+foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; "and if he made off, I
+ought to shoot him," he added, obviously proud of knowing what he
+must do if his father were escaping.
+
+And when a good-hearted lad has been brought to a state lower than
+that of a brute, he is just what is wanted by those who use him as
+an instrument of violence.  He is ready; the man has been
+destroyed and a new instrument of violence has been created.  And
+all this is done every year, every autumn, everywhere, through all
+Russia in broad daylight in the midst of large towns, where all
+may see it, and the deception is so clever, so skillful, that
+though all men know the infamy of it in their hearts, and see all
+its horrible results, they cannot throw it off and be free.
+
+When one's eyes are opened to this awful deception practiced upon
+us, one marvels that the teachers of the Christian religion and of
+morals, the instructors of youth, or even the good-hearted and
+intelligent parents who are to be found in every society, can
+teach any kind of morality in a society in which it is openly
+admitted (it is so admitted, under all governments and all
+churches) that murder and torture form an indispensable element in
+the life of all, and that there must always be special men trained
+to kill their fellows, and that any one of us may have to become
+such a trained assassin.
+
+How can children, youths, and people generally be taught any kind
+of morality--not to speak of teaching in the spirit of
+Christianity--side by side with the doctrine that murder is
+necessary for the public weal, and therefore legitimate, and that
+there are men, of whom each of us may have to be one, whose duty
+is to murder and torture and commit all sorts of crimes at the
+will of those who are in possession of authority.  If this is so,
+and one can and ought to murder and torture, there is not, and
+cannot be, any kind of moral law, but only the law that might is
+right.  And this is just how it is.  In reality that is the
+doctrine--justified to some by the theory of the struggle for
+existence--which reigns in our society.
+
+And, indeed, what sort of ethical doctrine could admit the
+legitimacy of murder for any object whatever?  It is as impossible
+as a theory of mathematics admitting that two is equal to three.
+
+There may be a semblance of mathematics admitting that two is
+equal to three, but there can be no real science of mathematics.
+And there can only be a semblance of ethics in which murder in the
+shape of war and the execution of criminals is allowed, but no
+true ethics.  The recognition of the life of every man as sacred
+is the first and only basis of all ethics.
+
+The doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth has been
+abrogated by Christianity, because it is the justification of
+immorality, and a mere semblance of equity, and has no real
+meaning.  Life is a value which has no weight nor size, and cannot
+be compared to any other, and so there is no sense in destroying a
+life for a life.  Besides, every social law aims at the
+amelioration of man's life.  What way, then, can the annihilation
+of the life of some men ameliorate men's life?  Annihilation of
+life cannot be a means of the amelioration of life; it is a
+suicidal act.
+
+To destroy another life for the sake of justice is as though a
+man, to repair the misfortune of losing one arm, should cut off
+the other arm for the sake of equity.
+
+But putting aside the sin of deluding men into regarding the most
+awful crime as a duty, putting aside the revolting sin of using
+the name and authority of Christ to sanction what he most
+condemned, not to speak of the curse on those who cause these
+"little ones" to offend--how can people who cherish their own way
+of life, their progress, even from the point of view of their
+personal security, allow the formation in their midst of an
+overwhelming force as senseless, cruel, and destructive as every
+government is organized on the basis of an army?  Even the most
+cruel band of brigands is not so much to be dreaded as such a
+government.
+
+The power of every brigand chief is at least so far limited that
+the men of his band preserve at least some human liberty, and can
+refuse to commit acts opposed to their conscience.  But, owing to
+the perfection to which the discipline of the army has been
+brought, there is no limit to check men who form part of a
+regularly organized government.  There are no crimes so revolting
+that they would not readily be committed by men who form part of a
+government or army, at the will of anyone (such as Boulanger,
+Napoleon, or Pougachef) who may chance to be at their head.
+
+Often when one sees conscription levies, military drills and
+maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at
+their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for
+whole days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the
+whistle of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when
+one sees in the midst of a town where any effort at violence in
+self-defense is forbidden, where the sale of powder and of
+chemicals, where furious driving and practicing as a doctor
+without a diploma, and so on, are not allowed; thousands of
+disciplined troops, trained to murder, and subject to one man's
+will; one asks oneself how can people who prize their security
+quietly allow it, and put up with it?  Apart from the immorality
+and evil effects of it, nothing can possibly be more unsafe.  What
+are people thinking about?  I don't mean now Christians, ministers
+of religion, philanthropists, and moralists, but simply people who
+value their life, their security, and their comfort.  This
+organization, we know, will work just as well in one man's hands
+as another's.  To-day, let us assume, power is in the hands of a
+ruler who can be endured, but to-morrow it may be seized by a
+Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pougachef, a Napoleon I., or a
+Napoleon III.
+
+And the man in authority, endurable to-day, may become a brute
+to-morrow, or may be succeeded by a mad or imbecile heir, like the King
+of Bavaria or our Paul I.
+
+And not only the highest authorities, but all little satraps
+scattered over everywhere, like so many General Baranovs,
+governors, police officers even, and commanders of companies, can
+perpetrate the most awful crimes before there is time for them to
+be removed from office.  And this is what is constantly happening.
+
+One involuntarily asks how can men let it go on, not from higher
+considerations only, but from regard to their own safety?
+
+The answer to this question is that it is not all people who do
+tolerate it (some--the greater proportion--deluded and submissive,
+have no choice and have to tolerate anything).  It is tolerated by
+those who only under such an organization can occupy a position of
+profit.  They tolerate it, because for them the risks of suffering
+from a foolish or cruel man being at the head of the government or
+the army are always less than the disadvantages to which they
+would be exposed by the destruction of the organization itself.
+
+A judge, a commander of police, a governor, or an officer will
+keep his position just the same under Boulanger or the republic,
+under Pougachef or Catherine.  He will lose his profitable
+position for certain, if the existing order of things which
+secured it to him is destroyed.  And so all these people feel no
+uneasiness as to who is at the head of the organization, they will
+adapt themselves to anyone; they only dread the downfall of the
+organization itself, and that is the reason--though often an
+unconscious one--that they support it.
+
+One often wonders why independent people, who are not forced to do so in
+any way, the so-called ÉLITE of society, should go into the army in
+Russia, England, Germany, Austria, and even France, and seek
+opportunities of becoming murderers. Why do even high-principled parents
+send their boys to military schools? Why do mothers buy their children
+toy helmets, guns, and swords as playthings? (The peasant's children
+never play at soldiers, by the way). Why do good men and even women, who
+have certainly no interest in war, go into raptures over the various
+exploits of Skobeloff and others, and vie with one another in glorifying
+them? Why do men, who are not obliged to do so, and get no fee for it,
+devote, like the marshals of nobility in Russia, whole months of toil to
+a business physically disagreeable and morally painful--the enrolling of
+conscripts? Why do all kings and emperors wear the military uniform? Why
+do they all hold military reviews, why do they organize maneuvers,
+distribute rewards to the military, and raise monuments to generals and
+successful commanders? Why do rich men of independent position consider
+it an honor to perform a valet's duties in attendance on crowned
+personages, flattering them and cringing to them and pretending to
+believe in their peculiar superiority? Why do men who have ceased to
+believe in the superstitions of the mediaeval Church, and who could not
+possibly believe in them seriously and consistently, pretend to believe
+in and give their support to the demoralizing and blasphemous
+institution of the church? Why is it that not only governments but
+private persons of the higher classes, try so jealously to maintain the
+ignorance of the people? Why do they fall with such fury on any effort
+at breaking down religious superstitions or really enlightening the
+people? Why do historians, novelists, and poets, who have no hope of
+gaining anything by their flatteries, make heroes of kings, emperors,
+and conquerors of past times? Why do men, who call themselves learned,
+dedicate whole lifetimes to making theories to prove that violence
+employed by authority against the people is not violence at all, but a
+special right? One often wonders why a fashionable lady or an artist,
+who, one would think, would take no interest in political or military
+questions, should always condemn strikes of working people, and defend
+war; and should always be found without hesitation opposed to the one,
+favorable to the other.
+
+But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher
+classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain
+and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which
+they enjoy their privileges.  The fashionable lady had certainly
+not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to
+defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not
+have her entertainments and her ball-dresses.  And the artist
+certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the
+troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures.  But
+instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them
+unerringly.  And it is precisely this instinct which leads all
+men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political,
+and economic institutions which are to their advantage.
+
+But is it possible that the higher classes support the existing
+order of things simply because it is to their advantage?  Cannot
+they see that this order of things is essentially irrational, that
+it is no longer consistent with the stage of moral development
+attained by people, and with public opinion, and that it is
+fraught with perils?  The governing classes, or at least the good,
+honest, and intelligent people of them, cannot but suffer from
+these fundamental inconsistencies, and see the dangers with which
+they are threatened.  And is it possible that all the millions of
+the lower classes can feel easy in conscience when they commit
+such obviously evil deeds as torture and murder from fear of
+punishment?  Indeed, it could not be so, neither the former nor
+the latter could fail to see the irrationality of their conduct,
+if the complexity of government organization did not obscure the
+unnatural senselessness of their actions.
+
+So many instigate, assist, or sanction the commission of every one
+of these actions that no one who has a hand in them feels himself
+morally responsible for it.
+
+It is the custom among assassins to oblige all the witnesses of a
+murder to strike the murdered victim, that the responsibility may
+be divided among as large a number of people as possible.  The
+same principle in different forms is applied under the government
+organization in the perpetration of the crimes, without which no
+government organization could exist.  Rulers always try to
+implicate as many citizens as possible in all the crimes committed
+in their support.
+
+Of late this tendency has been expressed in a very obvious manner
+by the obligation of all citizens to take part in legal processes
+as jurors, in the army as soldiers, in the local government, or
+legislative assembly, as electors or members.
+
+Just as in a wicker basket all the ends are so hidden away that it
+is hard to find them, in the state organization the responsibility
+for the crimes committed is so hidden away that men will commit
+the most atrocious acts without seeing their responsibility for
+them.
+
+In ancient times tyrants got credit for the crimes they committed,
+but in our day the most atrocious infamies, inconceivable under
+the Neros, are perpetrated and no one gets blamed for them.
+
+One set of people have suggested, another set have proposed, a
+third have reported, a fourth have decided, a fifth have
+confirmed, a sixth have given the order, and a seventh set of men
+have carried it out.  They hang, they flog to death women, old
+men, and innocent people, as was done recently among us in Russia
+at the Yuzovsky factory, and is always being done everywhere in
+Europe and America in the struggle with the anarchists and all
+other rebels against the existing order; they shoot and hang men
+by hundreds and thousands, or massacre millions in war, or break
+men's hearts in solitary confinement, and ruin their souls in the
+corruption of a soldier's life, and no one is responsible.
+
+At the bottom of the social scale soldiers, armed with guns,
+pistols, and sabers, injure and murder people, and compel men
+through these means to enter the army, and are absolutely
+convinced that the responsibility for the actions rests solely on
+the officers who command them.
+
+At the top of the scale--the Tzars, presidents, ministers, and
+parliaments decree these tortures and murders and military
+conscription, and are fully convinced that since they are either
+placed in authority by the grace of God or by the society they
+govern, which demands such decrees from them, they cannot be held
+responsible.  Between these two extremes are the intermediary
+personages who superintend the murders and other acts of violence,
+and are fully convinced that the responsibility is taken off their
+shoulders partly by their superiors who have given the order,
+partly by the fact that such orders are expected from them by all
+who are at the bottom of the scale.
+
+The authority who gives the orders and the authority who executes
+them at the two extreme ends of the state organization, meet
+together like the two ends of a ring; they support and rest on one
+another and inclose all that lies within the ring.
+
+Without the conviction that there is a person or persons who will
+take the whole responsibility of his acts, not one soldier would
+ever lift a hand to commit a murder or other deed of violence.
+
+Without the conviction that it is expected by the whole people not
+a single king, emperor, president, or parliament would order
+murders or acts of violence.
+
+Without the conviction that there are persons of a higher grade
+who will take the responsibility, and people of a lower grade who
+require such acts for their welfare, not one of the intermediate
+class would superintend such deeds.
+
+The state is so organized that wherever a man is placed in the
+social scale, his irresponsibility is the same.  The higher his
+grade the more he is under the influence of demands from below,
+and the less he is controlled by orders from above, and VICE
+VERSA.
+
+All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the
+responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier
+on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on
+the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the
+nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on
+the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar, and
+the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and
+peasants.  But that is not all.  Besides the fact that men get rid
+of the sense of responsibility for their actions in this way, they
+lose their moral sense of responsibility also, by the fact that in
+forming themselves into a state organization they persuade
+themselves and each other so continually, and so indefatigably,
+that they are not all equal, but "as the stars apart," that they
+come to believe it genuinely themselves.  Thus some are persuaded
+that they are not simple people like everyone else, but special
+people who are to be specially honored.  It is instilled into
+another set of men by every possible means that they are inferior
+to others, and therefore must submit without a murmur to every
+order given them by their superiors.
+
+On this inequality, above all, on the elevation of some and the
+degradation of others, rests the capacity men have of being blind
+to the insanity of the existing order of life, and all the cruelty
+and criminality of the deception practiced by one set of men on
+another.
+
+Those in whom the idea has been instilled that they are invested
+with a special supernatural grandeur and consequence, are so
+intoxicated with a sense of their own imaginary dignity that they
+cease to feel their responsibility for what they do.
+
+While those, on the other hand, in whom the idea is fostered that
+they are inferior animals, bound to obey their superiors in
+everything, fall, through this perpetual humiliation, into a
+strange condition of stupefied servility, and in this stupefied
+state do not see the significance of their actions and lose all
+consciousness of responsibility for what they do.
+
+The intermediate class, who obey the orders of their superiors on
+the one hand and regard themselves as superior beings on the
+other, are intoxicated by power and stupefied by servility at the
+same time and so lose the sense of their responsibility.
+
+One need only glance during a review at the commander-in-chief,
+intoxicated with self-importance, followed by his retinue, all on
+magnificent and gayly appareled horses, in splendid uniforms and wearing
+decorations, and see how they ride to the harmonious and solemn strains
+of music before the ranks of soldiers, all presenting arms and petrified
+with servility. One need only glance at this spectacle to understand
+that at such moments, when they are in a state of the most complete
+intoxication, commander-in-chief, soldiers, and intermediate officers
+alike, would be capable of committing crimes of which they would never
+dream under other conditions.
+
+The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews,
+religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and
+temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic,
+permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any
+kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest
+police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in
+subjection to authority and in a state of stupefied servility.
+The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their
+own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and
+importance to those they serve.
+
+It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the
+intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men
+associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to
+their conscience without the least scruple or remorse. Under the
+influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no longer simply
+men as they are, but some special beings--noblemen, merchants,
+governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or soldiers--no longer
+bound by ordinary human duties, but by other duties far more
+weighty--the peculiar duties of a nobleman, merchant, governor, judge,
+officer, tzar, minister, or soldier.
+
+Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only
+because he fancied himself not a simple man, having the same
+rights to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone
+else, but a great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under
+the influence of the intoxication of power he felt his dignity
+offended by the peasants' claims.  It was only through this
+feeling that, without considering the consequences that might
+follow, he sent in a claim to be reinstated in his pretended
+rights.
+
+In the same way the judges, who wrongfully adjudged the forest to
+the proprietor, did so simply because they fancied themselves not
+simply men like everyone else, and so bound to be guided in
+everything only by what they consider right, but, under the
+intoxicating influence of power, imagined themselves the
+representatives of the justice which cannot err; while under the
+intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves bound
+to carry out to the letter the instructions inscribed in a certain
+book, the so-called law.  In the same way all who take part in
+such an affair, from the highest representative of authority who
+signs his assent to the report, from the superintendent presiding
+at the recruiting sessions, and the priest who deludes the
+recruits, to the lowest soldier who is ready now to fire on his
+own brothers, imagine, in the intoxication of power or of
+servility, that they are some conventional characters.  They do
+not face the question that is presented to them, whether or not
+they ought to take part in what their conscience judges an evil
+act, but fancy themselves various conventional personages--one as
+the Tzar, God's anointed, an exceptional being, called to watch
+over the happiness of one hundred millions of men; another as the
+representative of nobility; another as a priest, who has received
+special grace by his ordination; another as a soldier, bound by
+his military oath to carry out all he is commanded without
+reflection.
+
+Only under the intoxication of the power or the servility of their
+imagined positions could all these people act as they do.
+
+Were not they all firmly convinced that their respective vocations
+of tzar, minister, governor, judge, nobleman, landowner,
+superintendent, officer, and soldier are something real and
+important, not one of them would even think without horror and
+aversion of taking part in what they do now.
+
+The conventional positions, established hundreds of years,
+recognized for centuries and by everyone, distinguished by special
+names and dresses, and, moreover, confirmed by every kind of
+solemnity, have so penetrated into men's minds through their
+senses, that, forgetting the ordinary conditions of life common to
+all, they look at themselves and everyone only from this
+conventional point of view, and are guided in their estimation of
+their own actions and those of others by this conventional
+standard.
+
+Thus we see a man of perfect sanity and ripe age, simply because
+he is decked out with some fringe, or embroidered keys on his coat
+tails, or a colored ribbon only fit for some gayly dressed girl,
+and is told that he is a general, a chamberlain, a knight of the
+order of St. Andrew, or some similar nonsense, suddenly become
+self-important, proud, and even happy, or, on the contrary, grow
+melancholy and unhappy to the point of falling ill, because he has
+failed to obtain the expected decoration or title.  Or what is
+still more striking, a young man, perfectly sane in every other
+matter, independent and beyond the fear of want, simply because he
+has been appointed judicial prosecutor or district commander,
+separates a poor widow from her little children, and shuts her up
+in prison, leaving her children uncared for, all because the
+unhappy woman carried on a secret trade in spirits, and so
+deprived the revenue of twenty-five rubles, and he does not feel
+the least pang of remorse.  Or what is still more amazing; a man,
+otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a
+badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs
+officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those
+around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary,
+would regard him as to blame if he did not fire.  To say nothing
+of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who
+kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because
+it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but
+jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.
+
+This strange and abnormal condition of men under state
+organization is usually expressed in the following words: "As a
+man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or
+soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him."  Just as though
+there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would
+exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact
+of our common humanity.
+
+So, for example, in the case before us, men are going to murder
+and torture the famishing, and they admit that in the dispute
+between the peasants and the landowner the peasants are right (all
+those in command said as much to me).  They know that the peasants
+are wretched, poor, and hungry, and the landowner is rich and
+inspires no sympathy.  Yet they are all going to kill the peasants
+to secure three thousand rubles for the landowner, only because at
+that moment they fancy themselves not men but governor, official,
+general of police, officer, and soldier, respectively, and
+consider themselves bound to obey, not the eternal demands of the
+conscience of man, but the casual, temporary demands of their
+positions as officers or soldiers.
+
+Strange as it may seem, the sole explanation of this astonishing
+phenomenon is that they are in the condition of the hypnotized,
+who, they say, feel and act like the creatures they are commanded
+by the hypnotizer to represent.  When, for instance, it is
+suggested to the hypnotized subject that he is lame, he begins to
+walk lame, that he is blind, and he cannot see, that he is a wild
+beast, and he begins to bite.  This is the state, not only of
+those who were going on this expedition, but of all men who
+fulfill their state and social duties in preference to and in
+detriment of their human duties.
+
+The essence of this state is that under the influence of one
+suggestion they lose the power of criticising their actions, and
+therefore do, without thinking, everything consistent with the
+suggestion to which they are led by example, precept, or
+insinuation.
+
+The difference between those hypnotized by scientific men and
+those under the influence of the state hypnotism, is that an
+imaginary position is suggested to the former suddenly by one
+person in a very brief space of time, and so the hypnotized state
+appears to us in a striking and surprising form, while the
+imaginary position suggested by state influence is induced slowly,
+little by little, imperceptibly from childhood, sometimes during
+years, or even generations, and not in one person alone but in a
+whole society.
+
+"But," it will be said, "at all times, in all societies, the
+majority of persons--all the children, all the women absorbed in
+the bearing and rearing of the young, all the great mass of the
+laboring population, who are under the necessity of incessant and
+fatiguing physical labor, all those of weak character by nature,
+all those who are abnormally enfeebled intellectually by the
+effects of nicotine, alcohol, opium, or other intoxicants--are
+always in a condition of incapacity for independent thought, and
+are either in subjection to those who are on a higher intellectual
+level, or else under the influence of family or social traditions,
+of what is called public opinion, and there is nothing unnatural
+or incongruous in their subjection."
+
+And truly there is nothing unnatural in it, and the tendency of
+men of small intellectual power to follow the lead of those on a
+higher level of intelligence is a constant law, and it is owing to
+it that men can live in societies and on the same principles at
+all.  The minority consciously adopt certain rational principles
+through their correspondence with reason, while the majority act
+on the same principles unconsciously because it is required by
+public opinion.
+
+Such subjection to public opinion on the part of the
+unintellectual does not assume an unnatural character till the
+public opinion is split into two.
+
+But there are times when a higher truth, revealed at first to a
+few persons, gradually gains ground till it has taken hold of such
+a number of persons that the old public opinion, founded on a
+lower order of truths, begins to totter and the new is ready to
+take its place, but has not yet been firmly established.  It is
+like the spring, this time of transition, when the old order of
+ideas has not quite broken up and the new has not quite gained a
+footing.  Men begin to criticise their actions in the light of the
+new truth, but in the meantime in practice, through inertia and
+tradition, they continue to follow the principles which once
+represented the highest point of rational consciousness, but are
+now in flagrant contradiction with it.
+
+Then men are in an abnormal, wavering condition, feeling the
+necessity of following the new ideal, and yet not bold enough to
+break with the old-established traditions.
+
+Such is the attitude in regard to the truth of Christianity not
+only of the men in the Toula train, but of the majority of men of
+our times, alike of the higher and the lower orders.
+
+Those of the ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable
+justification for the profitable positions they occupy, are
+forced, in order to keep them, to stifle their higher rational
+faculty of loving, and to persuade themselves that their positions
+are indispensable.  And those of the lower classes, exhausted by
+toil and brutalized of set purpose, are kept in a permanent
+deception, practiced deliberately and continuously by the higher
+classes upon them.
+
+Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradictions with
+which our life is full, and of which a striking example was
+presented to me by the expedition I met on the 9th of September;
+good, peaceful men, known to me personally, going with untroubled
+tranquillity to perpetrate the most beastly, senseless, and vile
+of crimes.  Had not they some means of stifling their conscience,
+not one of them would be capable of committing a hundredth part of
+such a villainy.
+
+It is not that they have not a conscience which forbids them from
+acting thus, just as, even three or four hundred years ago, when
+people burnt men at the stake and put them to the rack they had a
+conscience which prohibited it; the conscience is there, but it
+has been put to sleep--in those in command by what the
+psychologists call auto-suggestion; in the soldiers, by the direct
+conscious hypnotizing exerted by the higher classes.
+
+Though asleep, the conscience is there, and in spite of the
+hypnotism it is already speaking in them, and it may awake.
+
+All these men are in a position like that of a man under
+hypnotism, commanded to do something opposed to everything he
+regards as good and rational, such as to kill his mother or his
+child.  The hypnotized subject feels himself bound to carry out
+the suggestion--he thinks he cannot stop--but the nearer he gets
+to the time and the place of the action, the more the benumbed
+conscience begins to stir, to resist, and to try to awake.  And no
+one can say beforehand whether he will carry out the suggestion or
+not; which will gain the upper hand, the rational conscience or
+the irrational suggestion.  It all depends on their relative
+strength.
+
+That is just the case with the men in the Toula train and in
+general with everyone carrying out acts of state violence in our
+day.
+
+There was a time when men who set out with the object of murder and
+violence, to make an example, did not return till they had carried out
+their object, and then, untroubled by doubts or scruples, having calmly
+flogged men to death, they returned home and caressed their children,
+laughed, amused themselves, and enjoyed the peaceful pleasures of family
+life. In those days it never struck the landowners and wealthy men who
+profited by these crimes, that the privileges they enjoyed had any
+direct connection with these atrocities. But now it is no longer so. Men
+know now, or are not far from knowing, what they are doing and for what
+object they do it. They can shut their eyes and force their conscience
+to be still, but so long as their eyes are opened and their conscience
+undulled, they must all--those who carry out and those who profit by
+these crimes alike--see the import of them. Sometimes they realize it
+only after the crime has been perpetrated, sometimes they realize it
+just before its perpetration. Thus those who commanded the recent acts
+of violence in Nijni-Novgorod, Saratov, Orel, and the Yuzovsky factory
+realized their significance only after their perpetration, and now those
+who commanded and those who carried out these crimes are ashamed before
+public opinion and their conscience. I have talked to soldiers who had
+taken part in these crimes, and they always studiously turned the
+conversation off the subject, and when they spoke of it it was with
+horror and bewilderment. There are cases, too, when men come to
+themselves just before the perpetration of the crime. Thus I know the
+case of a sergeant-major who had been beaten by two peasants during the
+repression of disorder and had made a complaint. The next day, after
+seeing the atrocities perpetrated on the other peasants, he entreated
+the commander of his company to tear up his complaint and let off the
+two peasants. I know cases when soldiers, commanded to fire, have
+refused to obey, and I know many cases of officers who have refused to
+command expeditions for torture and murder. So that men sometimes come
+to their senses long before perpetrating the suggested crime, sometimes
+at the very moment before perpetrating it, sometimes only afterward.
+
+The men traveling in the Toula train were going with the object of
+killing and injuring their fellow-creatures, but none could tell
+whether they would carry out their object or not.  However obscure
+his responsibility for the affair is to each, and however strong
+the idea instilled into all of them that they are not men, but
+governors, officials, officers, and soldiers, and as such beings
+can violate every human duty, the nearer they approach the place
+of the execution, the stronger their doubts as to its being right,
+and this doubt will reach its highest point when the very moment
+for carrying it out has come.
+
+The governor, in spite of all the stupefying effect of his
+surroundings, cannot help hesitating when the moment comes to give
+final decisive command.  He knows that the action of the Governor
+of Orel has called down upon him the disapproval of the best
+people, and he himself, influenced by the public opinion of the
+circles in which he moves, has more than once expressed his
+disapprobation of him.  He knows that the prosecutor, who ought to
+have come, flatly refused to have anything to do with it, because
+he regarded it as disgraceful.  He knows, too, that there may be
+changes any day in the government, and that what was a ground for
+advancement yesterday may be the cause of disgrace to-morrow.  And
+he knows that there is a press, if not in Russia, at least abroad,
+which may report the affair and cover him with ignominy forever.
+He is already conscious of a change in public opinion which
+condemns what was formerly a duty.  Moreover, he cannot feel fully
+assured that his soldiers will at the last moment obey him.  He is
+wavering, and none can say beforehand what he will do.
+
+All the officers and functionaries who accompany him experience in
+greater or less degree the same emotions.  In the depths of their
+hearts they all know that what they are doing is shameful, that to
+take part in it is a discredit and blemish in the eyes of some
+people whose opinion they value.  They know that after murdering
+and torturing the defenseless, each of them will be ashamed to
+face his betrothed or the woman he is courting.  And besides, they
+too, like the governor, are doubtful whether the soldiers'
+obedience to orders can be reckoned on.  What a contrast with the
+confident air they all put on as they sauntered about the station
+and platform!  Inwardly they were not only in a state of suffering
+but even of suspense.  Indeed they only assumed this bold and
+composed manner to conceal the wavering within.  And this feeling
+increased as they drew near the scene of action.
+
+And imperceptible as it was, and strange as it seems to say so,
+all that mass of lads, the soldiers, who seemed so submissive,
+were in precisely the same condition.
+
+These are not the soldiers of former days, who gave up the natural
+life of industry and devoted their whole existence to debauchery,
+plunder, and murder, like the Roman legionaries or the warriors of
+the Thirty Years' War, or even the soldiers of more recent times
+who served for twenty-five years in the army.  They have mostly
+been only lately taken from their families, and are full of the
+recollections of the good, rational, natural life they have left
+behind them.
+
+All these lads, peasants for the most part, know what is the
+business they have come about; they know that the landowners
+always oppress their brothers the peasants, and that therefore it
+is most likely the same thing here.  Moreover, a majority of them
+can now read, and the books they read are not all such as exalt a
+military life; there are some which point out its immorality.
+Among them are often free-thinking comrades--who have enlisted
+voluntarily--or young officers of liberal ideas, and already the
+first germ of doubt has been sown in regard to the unconditional
+legitimacy and glory of their occupation.
+
+It is true that they have all passed through that terrible, skillful
+education, elaborated through centuries, which kills all initiative in a
+man, and that they are so trained to mechanical obedience that at the
+word of command: "Fire!--All the line!--Fire!" and so on, their guns
+will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed.
+But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the sand for amusement, it
+means firing on their broken-down, exploited fathers and brothers whom
+they see there in the crowd, with women and children shouting and waving
+their arms. Here they are--one with his scanty beard and patched coat
+and plaited shoes of reed, just like the father left at home in Kazan or
+Riazan province; one with gray beard and bent back, leaning on a staff
+like the old grandfather; one, a young fellow in boots and a red shirt,
+just as he was himself a year ago--he, the soldier who must fire upon
+him. There, too, a woman in reed shoes and PANYOVA, just like the mother
+left at home.
+
+Is it possible they must fire on them?  And no one knows what each
+soldier will do at the last minute.  The least word, the slightest
+allusion would be enough to stop them.
+
+At the last moment they will all find themselves in the position
+of a hypnotized man to whom it has been suggested to chop a log,
+who coming up to what has been indicated to him as a log, with the
+ax already lifted to strike, sees that it is not a log but his
+sleeping brother.  He may perform the act that has been suggested
+to him, and he may come to his senses at the moment of performing
+it.  In the same way all these men may come to themselves in time
+or they may go on to the end.
+
+If they do not come to themselves, the most fearful crime will be
+committed, as in Orel, and then the hypnotic suggestion under
+which they act will be strengthened in all other men.  If they do
+come to themselves, not only this terrible crime will not be
+perpetrated, but many also who hear of the turn the affair has
+taken will be emancipated from the hypnotic influence in which
+they were held, or at least will be nearer being emancipated from
+it.
+
+Even if a few only come to themselves, and boldly explain to the
+others all the wickedness of such a crime, the influence of these
+few may rouse the others to shake off the controlling suggestion,
+and the atrocity will not be perpetrated.
+
+More than that, if a few men, even of those who are not taking
+part in the affair but are only present at the preparations for
+it, or have heard of such things being done in the past, do not
+remain indifferent but boldly and plainly express their
+detestation of such crimes to those who have to execute them, and
+point out to them all the senselessness, cruelty, and wickedness
+of such acts, that alone will be productive of good.
+
+That was what took place in the instance before us.  It was enough
+for a few men, some personally concerned in the affair and others
+simply outsiders, to express their disapproval of floggings that
+had taken place elsewhere, and their contempt and loathing for
+those who had taken part in inflicting them, for a few persons in
+the Toula case to express their repugnance to having any share in
+it; for a lady traveling by the train, and a few other bystanders
+at the station, to express to those who formed the expedition
+their disgust at what they were doing; for one of the commanders
+of a company, who was asked for troops for the restoration of
+order, to reply that soldiers ought not to be butchers--and thanks
+to these and a few other seemingly insignificant influences
+brought to bear on these hypnotized men, the affair took a
+completely different turn, and the troops, when they reached the
+place, did not inflict any punishment, but contented themselves
+with cutting down the forest and giving it to the landowner.
+
+Had not a few persons had a clear consciousness that what they
+were doing was wrong, and consequently influenced one another in
+that direction, what was done at Orel would have taken place at
+Toula.  Had this consciousness been still stronger, and had the
+influence exerted been therefore greater than it was, it might
+well have been that the governor with his troops would not even
+have ventured to cut down the forest and give it to the landowner.
+
+Had that consciousness been stronger still, it might well have
+been that the governor would not have ventured to go to the scene
+of action at all; even that the minister would not have ventured
+to form this decision or the Tzar to ratify it.
+
+All depends, therefore, on the strength of the consciousness of
+Christian truth on the part of each individual man.
+
+And, therefore, one would have thought that the efforts of all men
+of the present day who profess to wish to work for the welfare of
+humanity would have been directed to strengthening this
+consciousness of Christian truth in themselves and others.
+
+But, strange to say, it is precisely those people who profess most
+anxiety for the amelioration of human life, and are regarded as
+the leaders of public opinion, who assert that there is no need to
+do that, and that there are other more effective means for the
+amelioration of men's condition.  They affirm that the
+amelioration of human life is effected not by the efforts of
+individual men, to recognize and propagate the truth, but by the
+gradual modification of the general conditions of life, and that
+therefore the efforts of individuals should be directed to the
+gradual modification of external conditions for the better.  For
+every advocacy of a truth inconsistent with the existing order by
+an individual is, they maintain, not only useless but injurious,
+since in provokes coercive measures on the part of the
+authorities, restricting these individuals from continuing any
+action useful to society.  According to this doctrine all
+modifications in human life are brought about by precisely the
+same laws as in the life of the animals.
+
+So that, according to this doctrine, all the founders of
+religions, such as Moses and the prophets, Confucius, Lao-Tse,
+Buddha, Christ, and others, preached their doctrines and their
+followers accepted them, not because they loved the truth, but
+because the political, social, and above all economic conditions
+of the peoples among whom these religions arose were favorable for
+their origination and development.
+
+And therefore the chief efforts of the man who wishes to serve
+society and improve the condition of humanity ought, according to
+this doctrine, to be directed not to the elucidation and
+propagation of truth, but to the improvement of the external
+political, social, and above all economic conditions.  And the
+modification of these conditions is partly effected by serving the
+government and introducing liberal and progressive principles into
+it, partly in promoting the development of industry and the
+propagation of socialistic ideas, and most of all by the diffusion
+of science.  According to this theory it is of no consequence
+whether you profess the truth revealed to you, and therefore
+realize it in your life, or at least refrain from committing
+actions opposed to the truth, such as serving the government and
+strengthening its authority when you regard it as injurious,
+profiting by the capitalistic system when you regard it as wrong,
+showing veneration for various ceremonies which you believe to be
+degrading superstitions, giving support to the law when you
+believe it to be founded on error, serving as a soldier, taking
+oaths, and lying, and lowering yourself generally.  It is useless
+to refrain from all that; what is of use is not altering the
+existing forms of life, but submitting to them against your own
+convictions, introducing liberalism into the existing
+institutions, promoting commerce, the propaganda of socialism, and
+the triumphs of what is called science, and the diffusion of
+education.  According to this theory one can remain a landowner,
+merchant, manufacturer, judge, official in government pay, officer
+or soldier, and still be not only a humane man, but even a
+socialist and revolutionist.
+
+Hypocrisy, which had formerly only a religious basis in the
+doctrine of original sin, the redemption, and the Church, has in
+our day gained a new scientific basis and has consequently caught
+in its nets all those who had reached too high a stage of
+development to be able to find support in religious hypocrisy.  So
+that while in former days a man who professed the religion of the
+Church could take part in all the crimes of the state, and profit
+by them, and still regard himself as free from any taint of sin,
+so long as he fulfilled the external observances of his creed,
+nowadays all who do not believe in the Christianity of the Church,
+find similar well-founded irrefutable reasons in science for
+regarding themselves as blameless and even highly moral in spite
+of their participation in the misdeeds of government and the
+advantages they gain from them.
+
+A rich landowner--not only in Russia, but in France, England, Germany,
+or America--lives on the rents exacted; from the people living on his
+land, and robs these generally poverty-stricken people of all he can get
+from them. This man's right of property in the land rests on the fact
+that at every effort on the part of the oppressed people, without his
+consent, to make use of the land he considers his, troops are called out
+to subject them to punishment and murder. One would have thought that it
+was obvious that a man living in this way was an evil, egoistic creature
+and could not possibly consider himself a Christian or a liberal. One
+would have supposed it evident that the first thing such a man must do,
+if he wishes to approximate to Christianity or liberalism, would be to
+cease to plunder and ruin men by means of acts of state violence in
+support of his claim to the land. And so it would be if it were not for
+the logic of hypocrisy, which reasons that from a religious point of
+view possession or non-possession of land is of no consequence for
+salvation, and from the scientific point of view, giving up the
+ownership of land is a useless individual renunciation, and that the
+welfare of mankind is not promoted in that way, but by a gradual
+modification of external forms. And so we see this man, without the
+least trouble of mind or doubt that people will believe in his
+sincerity, organizing an agricultural exhibition, or a temperance
+society, or sending some soup and stockings by his wife or children to
+three old women, and boldly in his family, in drawing rooms, in
+committees, and in the press, advocating the Gospel or humanitarian
+doctrine of love for one's neighbor in general and the agricultural
+laboring population in particular whom he is continually exploiting and
+oppressing. And other people who are in the same position as he believe
+him, commend him, and solemnly discuss with him measures for
+ameliorating the condition of the working-class, on whose exploitation
+their whole life rests, devising all kinds of possible methods for this,
+except the one without which all improvement of their condition is
+impossible, i. e., refraining from taking from them the land necessary
+for their subsistence. (A striking example of this hypocrisy was the
+solicitude displayed by the Russian landowners last year, their efforts
+to combat the famine which they had caused, and by which they profited,
+selling not only bread at the highest price, but even potato haulm at
+five rubles the dessiatine (about 2 and four-fifths acres) for fuel to
+the freezing peasants.)
+
+Or take a merchant whose whole trade--like all trade indeed--is
+founded on a series of trickery, by means of which, profiting by
+the ignorance or need of others, he buys goods below their value
+and sells them again above their value.  One would have fancied it
+obvious that a man whose whole occupation was based on what in his
+own language is called swindling, if it is done under other
+conditions, ought to be ashamed of his position, and could not any
+way, while he continues a merchant, profess himself a Christian or
+a liberal.
+
+But the sophistry of hypocrisy reasons that the merchant can pass for a
+virtuous man without giving up his pernicious course of action; a
+religious man need only have faith and a liberal man need only promote
+the modification of external conditions--the progress of industry. And
+so we see the merchant (who often goes further and commits acts of
+direct dishonesty, selling adulterated goods, using false weights and
+measures, and trading in products injurious to health, such as alcohol
+and opium) boldly regarding himself and being regarded by others, so
+long as he does not directly deceive his colleagues in business, as a
+pattern of probity and virtue. And if he spends a thousandth part of his
+stolen wealth on some public institution, a hospital or museum or
+school, then he is even regarded as the benefactor of the people on the
+exploitation and corruption of whom his whole prosperity has been
+founded: if he sacrifices, too, a portion of his ill-gotten gains on a
+Church and the poor, then he is an exemplary Christian.
+
+A manufacturer is a man whose whole income consists of value
+squeezed out of the workmen, and whose whole occupation is based
+on forced, unnatural labor, exhausting whole generations of men.
+It would seem obvious that if this man professes any Christian or
+liberal principles, he must first of all give up ruining human
+lives for his own profit.  But by the existing theory he is
+promoting industry, and he ought not to abandon his pursuit.  It
+would even be injuring society for him to do so.  And so we see
+this man, the harsh slave-driver of thousands of men, building
+almshouses with little gardens two yards square for the workmen
+broken down in toiling for him, and a bank, and a poorhouse, and a
+hospital--fully persuaded that he has amply expiated in this way
+for all the human lives morally and physically ruined by him--and
+calmly going on with his business, taking pride in it.
+
+Any civil, religious, or military official in government employ,
+who serves the state from vanity, or, as is most often the case,
+simply for the sake of the pay wrung from the harassed and
+toilworn working classes (all taxes, however raised, always fall
+on labor), if he, as is very seldom the case, does not directly
+rob the government in the usual way, considers himself, and is
+considered by his fellows, as a most useful and virtuous member of
+society.
+
+A judge or a public prosecutor knows that through his sentence or
+his prosecution hundreds or thousands of poor wretches are at once
+torn from their families and thrown into prison, where they may go
+out of their minds, kill themselves with pieces of broken glass,
+or starve themselves; he knows that they have wives and mothers
+and children, disgraced and made miserable by separation from
+them, vainly begging for pardon for them or some alleviation of
+their sentence, and this judge or this prosecutor is so hardened
+in his hypocrisy that he and his fellows and his wife and his
+household are all fully convinced that he may be a most exemplary
+man.  According to the metaphysics of hypocrisy it is held that he
+is doing a work of public utility.  And this man who has ruined
+hundreds, thousands of men, who curse him and are driven to
+desperation by his action, goes to mass, a smile of shining
+benevolence on his smooth face, in perfect faith in good and in
+God, listens to the Gospel, caresses his children, preaches moral
+principles to them, and is moved by imaginary sufferings.
+
+All these men and those who depend on them, their wives, tutors,
+children, cooks, actors, jockeys, and so on, are living on the blood
+which by one means or another, through one set of blood-suckers or
+another, is drawn out of the working class, and every day their
+pleasures cost hundreds or thousands of days of labor. They see the
+sufferings and privations of these laborers and their children, their
+aged, their wives, and their sick, they know the punishments inflicted
+on those who resist this organized plunder, and far from decreasing, far
+from concealing their luxury, they insolently display it before these
+oppressed laborers who hate them, as though intentionally provoking them
+with the pomp of their parks and palaces, their theaters, hunts, and
+races. At the same time they continue to persuade themselves and others
+that they are all much concerned about the welfare of these working
+classes, whom they have always trampled under their feet, and on
+Sundays, richly dressed, they drive in sumptuous carriages to the houses
+of God built in very mockery of Christianity, and there listen to men,
+trained to this work of deception, who in white neckties or in brocaded
+vestments, according to their denomination, preach the love for their
+neighbor which they all gainsay in their lives. And these people have so
+entered into their part that they seriously believe that they really are
+what they pretend to be.
+
+The universal hypocrisy has so entered into the flesh and blood of
+all classes of our modern society, it has reached such a pitch
+that nothing in that way can rouse indignation.  Hypocrisy in the
+Greek means "acting," and acting--playing a part--is always
+possible.  The representatives of Christ give their blessing to
+the ranks of murderers holding their guns loaded against their
+brothers; "for prayer" priests, ministers of various Christian
+sects are always present, as indispensably as the hangman, at
+executions, and sanction by their presence the compatibility of
+murder with Christianity (a clergyman assisted at the attempt at
+murder by electricity in America)--but such facts cause no one any
+surprise.
+
+There was recently held at Petersburg an international exhibition
+of instruments of torture, handcuffs, models of solitary cells,
+that is to say instruments of torture worse than knouts or rods,
+and sensitive ladies and gentlemen went and amused themselves by
+looking at them.
+
+No one is surprised that together with its recognition of liberty,
+equality, and fraternity, liberal science should prove the
+necessity of war, punishment, customs, the censure, the regulation
+of prostitution, the exclusion of cheap foreign laborers, the
+hindrance of emigration, the justifiableness of colonization,
+based on poisoning and destroying whole races of men called
+savages, and so on.
+
+People talk of the time when all men shall profess what is called
+Christianity (that is, various professions of faith hostile to one
+another), when all shall be well-fed and clothed, when all shall
+be united from one end of the world to the other by telegraphs and
+telephones, and be able to communicate by balloons, when all the
+working classes are permeated by socialistic doctrines, when the
+Trades Unions possess so many millions of members and so many
+millions of rubles, when everyone is educated and all can read
+newspapers and learn all the sciences.
+
+But what good or useful thing can come of all these improvements,
+if men do not speak and act in accordance with what they believe
+to be the truth?
+
+The condition of men is the result of their disunion.  Their
+disunion results from their not following the truth which is one,
+but falsehoods which are many.  The sole means of uniting men is
+their union in the truth.  And therefore the more sincerely men
+strive toward the truth, the nearer they get to unity.
+
+But how can men be united in the truth or even approximate to it,
+if they do not even express the truth they know, but hold that
+there is no need to do so, and pretend to regard as truth what
+they believe to be false?
+
+And therefore no improvement is possible so long as men are
+hypocritical and hide the truth from themselves, so long as they
+do not recognize that their union and therefore their welfare is
+only possible in the truth, and do not put the recognition and
+profession of the truth revealed to them higher than everything
+else.
+
+All the material improvements that religious and scientific men
+can dream of may be accomplished; all men may accept Christianity,
+and all the reforms desired by the Bellamys may be brought about
+with every possible addition and improvement, but if the hypocrisy
+which rules nowadays still exists, if men do not profess the truth
+they know, but continue to feign belief in what they do not
+believe and veneration for what they do not respect, their
+condition will remain the same, or even grow worse and worse.  The
+more men are freed from privation; the more telegraphs,
+telephones, books, papers, and journals there are; the more means
+there will be of diffusing inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and
+the more disunited and consequently miserable will men become,
+which indeed is what we see actually taking place.
+
+All these material reforms may be realized, but the position of
+humanity will not be improved.  But only let each man, according
+to his powers, at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or
+at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the
+place of the truth, and at once, in this year 1893, we should see
+such reforms as we do not dare to hope for within a century--the
+emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon earth.
+
+Not without good reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening
+reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy.  It is not
+theft nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the
+special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes
+them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between
+right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the
+true meaning of all real human life, and debars them from all
+progress toward perfection.
+
+Those who do evil through ignorance of the truth provoke sympathy
+with their victims and repugnance for their actions, they do harm
+only to those they attack; but those who know the truth and do
+evil masked by hypocrisy, injure themselves and their victims, and
+thousands of other men as well who are led astray by the falsehood
+with which the wrongdoing is disguised.
+
+Thieves, robbers, murderers, and cheats, who commit crimes
+recognized by themselves and everyone else as evil, serve as an
+example of what ought not to be done, and deter others from
+similar crimes.  But those who commit the same thefts, robberies,
+murders, and other crimes, disguising them under all kinds of
+religious or scientific or humanitarian justifications, as all
+landowners, merchants, manufacturers, and government officials do,
+provoke others to imitation, and so do harm not only to those who
+are directly the victims of their crimes, but to thousands and
+millions of men whom they corrupt by obliterating their sense of
+the distinction between right and wrong.
+
+A single fortune gained by trading in goods necessary to the
+people or in goods pernicious in their effects, or by financial
+speculations, or by acquiring land at a low price the value of
+which is increased by the needs of the population, or by an
+industry ruinous to the health and life of those employed in it,
+or by military or civil service of the state, or by any employment
+which trades on men's evil instincts--a single fortune acquired in
+any of these ways, not only with the sanction, but even with the
+approbation of the leading men in society, and masked with an
+ostentation of philanthropy, corrupts men incomparably more than
+millions of thefts and robberies committed against the recognized
+forms of law and punishable as crimes.
+
+A single execution carried out by prosperous educated men
+uninfluenced by passion, with the approbation and assistance of
+Christian ministers, and represented as something necessary and
+even just, is infinitely more corrupting and brutalizing to men
+than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people
+under the influence of passion.  An execution such as was proposed
+by Joukovsky, which would produce even a sentiment of religious
+emotion in the spectators, would be one of the most perverting
+actions imaginable.  (SEE vol. iv. of the works of Joukovsky.)
+
+Every war, even the most humanely conducted, with all its ordinary
+consequences, the destruction of harvests, robberies, the license
+and debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its
+necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of
+military exploits, the worship of the flag, the patriotic
+sentiments, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on,
+does more in one year to pervert men's minds than thousands of
+robberies, murders, and arsons perpetrated during hundreds of
+years by individual men under the influence of passion.
+
+The luxurious expenditure of a single respectable and so-called
+honorable family, even within the conventional limits, consuming
+as it does the produce of as many days of labor as would suffice
+to provide for thousands living in privation near, does more to
+pervert men's minds than thousands of the violent orgies of coarse
+tradespeople, officers, and workmen of drunken and debauched
+habits, who smash up glasses and crockery for amusement.
+
+One solemn religious procession, one service, one sermon from the
+altar-steps or the pulpit, in which the preacher does not believe,
+produces incomparably more evil than thousands of swindling
+tricks, adulteration of food, and so on.
+
+We talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  But the hypocrisy of
+our society far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of
+the Pharisees.  They had at least an external religious law, the
+fulfillment of which hindered them from seeing their obligations
+to their neighbors.  Moreover, these obligations were not nearly
+so clearly defined in their day.  Nowadays we have no such
+religious law to exonerate us from our duties to our neighbors (I
+am not speaking now of the coarse and ignorant persons who still
+fancy their sins can be absolved by confession to a priest or by
+the absolution of the Pope).  On the contrary, the law of the
+Gospel which we all profess in one form or another directly
+defines these duties.  Besides, the duties which had then been
+only vaguely and mystically expressed by a few prophets have now
+been so clearly formulated, have become such truisms, that they
+are repeated even by schoolboys and journalists.  And so it would
+seem that men of to-day cannot pretend that they do not know these
+duties.
+
+A man of the modern world who profits by the order of things based
+on violence, and at the same time protests that he loves his
+neighbor and does not observe what he is doing in his daily life
+to his neighbor, is like a brigand who has spent his life in
+robbing men, and who, caught at last, knife in hand, in the very
+act of striking his shrieking victim, should declare that he had
+no idea that what he was doing was disagreeable to the man he had
+robbed and was prepared to murder.  Just as this robber and
+murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would
+seem that a man living upon the privations of the oppressed
+classes cannot persuade himself and others that he desires the
+welfare of those he plunders, and that he does not know how the
+advantages he enjoys are obtained.
+
+It is impossible to convince ourselves that we do not know that
+there are a hundred thousand men in prison in Russia alone to
+guarantee the security of our property and tranquillity, and that
+we do not know of the law tribunals in which we take part, and
+which, at our initiative, condemn those who have attacked our
+property or our security to prison, exile, or forced labor,
+whereby men no worse than those who condemn them are ruined and
+corrupted; or that we do not know that we only possess all that we
+do possess because it has been acquired and is defended for us by
+murder and violence.
+
+We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who
+marches up and down beneath our windows to guarantee our security
+while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the
+theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers
+who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly
+our property is attacked.
+
+We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our
+dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the
+ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt,
+thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which
+will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his
+share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our
+pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not the
+policeman and the soldier there prepared to run up at our first
+call for help.
+
+And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the
+act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to
+rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we
+too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the
+soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for
+defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fêtes
+and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do
+not know that men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right
+to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that
+they do not like working underground, in the water, or in stifling
+heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to
+manufacture objects for our pleasure.  One would imagine it
+impossible to deny what is so obvious.  Yet it is denied.
+
+Still, there are, among the rich, especially among the young, and
+among women, persons whom I am glad to meet more and more
+frequently, who, when they are shown in what way and at what cost
+their pleasures are purchased, do not try to conceal the truth,
+but hiding their heads in their hands, cry: "Ah! don't speak of
+that.  If it is so, life is impossible."  But though there are
+such sincere people who even though they cannot renounce their
+fault, at least see it, the vast majority of the men of the modern
+world have so entered into the parts they play in their hypocrisy
+that they boldly deny what is staring everyone in the face.
+
+"All that is unjust," they say; "no one forces the people to work
+for the landowners and manufacturers.  That is an affair of free
+contract.  Great properties and fortunes are necessary, because
+they provide and organize work for the working classes.  And labor
+in the factories and workshops is not at all the terrible thing
+you make it out to be.  Even if there are some abuses in
+factories, the government and the public are taking steps to
+obviate them and to make the labor of the factory workers much
+easier, and even agreeable.  The working classes are accustomed to
+physical labor, and are, so far, fit for nothing else.  The
+poverty of the people is not the result of private property in
+land, nor of capitalistic oppression, but of other causes: it is
+the result of the ignorance, brutality, and intemperance of the
+people.  And we men in authority who are striving against this
+impoverishment of the people by wise legislation, we capitalists
+who are combating it by the extension of useful inventions, we
+clergymen by religious instruction, and we liberals by the
+formation of trades unions, and the diffusion of education, are in
+this way increasing the prosperity of the people without changing
+our own positions.  We do not want all to be as poor as the poor;
+we want all to be as rich as the rich.  As for the assertion that
+men are ill treated and murdered to force them to work for the
+profit of the rich, that is a sophism.  The army is only called
+out against the mob, when the people, in ignorance of their own
+interests, make disturbances and destroy the tranquillity
+necessary for the public welfare.  In the same way, too, it is
+necessary to keep in restraint the malefactors for whom the
+prisons and gallows are established.  We ourselves wish to
+suppress these forms of punishment and are working in that
+direction."
+
+Hypocrisy in our day is supported on two sides: by false religion
+and by false science.  And it has reached such proportions that if
+we were not living in its midst, we could not believe that men
+could attain such a pitch of self-deception.  Men of the present
+day have come into such an extraordinary condition, their hearts
+are so hardened, that seeing they see not, hearing they do not
+hear, and understand not.
+
+Men have long been living in antagonism to their conscience.  If
+it were not for hypocrisy they could not go on living such a life.
+This social organization in opposition to their conscience only
+continues to exist because it is disguised by hypocrisy.
+
+And the greater the divergence between actual life and men's
+conscience, the greater the extension of hypocrisy.  But even
+hypocrisy has its limits.  And it seems to me that we have reached
+those limits in the present day.
+
+Every man of the present day with the Christian principles
+assimilated involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in
+precisely the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is
+obliged to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought
+not to do.  He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all
+the same he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop
+and cease doing what he ought not to do.  And just as in a dream,
+his position becoming more and more painful, at last reaches such
+a pitch of intensity that he begins sometimes to doubt the reality
+of what is passing and makes a moral effort to shake off the
+nightmare which is oppressing him.
+
+This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian
+society.  He feels that all that he does himself and that is done
+around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed
+to his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and
+more unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.
+
+It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of
+human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our
+need for peaceful association and unity between nations, should
+really go on living in such a way that every joy, every
+gratification we have is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of
+our brother men, and moreover, that we should be every instant
+within a hair's-breadth of falling on one another, nation against
+nation, like wild beasts, mercilessly destroying men's lives and
+labor, only because some benighted diplomatist or ruler says or
+writes some stupidity to another equally benighted diplomatist or
+ruler.
+
+It is impossible.  Yet every man of our day sees that this is so
+and awaits the calamity.  And the situation becomes more and more
+insupportable.
+
+And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears
+to him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual
+real world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the
+bottom of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is
+placed and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality,
+and tries to wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his
+conscience.
+
+And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask
+himself, "Isn't it a dream?" and the situation which seemed to him
+so hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to
+peaceful and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need
+only make a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by
+his own hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask
+himself, "Isn't it all a delusion?" and he will at once, like the
+dreamer awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and
+dreadful world to the true, calm, and happy reality.
+
+And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits.
+He need only make a moral effort.
+
+But can a man make this effort?
+
+According to the existing theory so essential to support
+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 his actions are conditioned by previously
+existing causes.  And whatever the man may do there are always
+some causes or other through which he does these or those acts,
+and therefore man cannot be free and change his life," say the
+champions of the metaphysics of hypocrisy.  And they would be
+perfectly right if man were a creature without conscience and
+incapable of moving toward the truth; that is to say, if after
+recognizing a new truth, man always remained at the same stage of
+moral development.  But man is a creature with a conscience and
+capable of attaining a higher and higher degree of truth.  And
+therefore even if man is not free as regards performing these or
+those acts because there exists a previous cause for every act,
+the very causes of his acts, consisting as they do for the man of
+conscience of the recognition of this or that truth, are within
+his own control.
+
+So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of
+his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they
+are performed.  Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify
+the movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to
+regulate the machine beforehand so as to determine what the
+movement is to be.
+
+Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not
+otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting
+is in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at
+some previous time, and is now only through inertia, through
+habit, acting in accordance with his previous recognition of
+truth.
+
+In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any
+given previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation
+to truth, and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a
+sufficient basis for action.
+
+Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or
+avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he
+considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act
+thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this
+reflection in the past.
+
+The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not
+on external causes, but on certain other causes within the man
+himself.  So that at times under external conditions apparently
+very favorable for the recognition of truth, one man will not
+recognize it, and another, on the contrary, under the most
+unfavorable conditions will, without apparent cause, recognize it.
+As it is said in the Gospel, "No man can come unto me, except the
+Father which hath sent me draw him."  That is to say, the
+recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the manifestations
+of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on
+certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man which escape
+our observation.
+
+And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels
+himself free in what is the motive of his acts--the recognition or
+non-recognition of truth.  And he feels himself independent not
+only of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own
+actions.
+
+Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act
+contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to
+recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing
+to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and
+justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as
+wrong and censure himself for it.
+
+Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and
+yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and
+drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime.  In
+the first case even if he does not at once get over his passion,
+he gets the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the
+truth about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his
+vice and will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it
+off.
+
+In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house
+on fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains
+free, recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of
+another even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad
+and to censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to
+regard his action as natural and necessary and to justify it to
+himself.  In the first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite
+of his departure from it, he prepares for himself in the future a
+whole series of acts of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from
+this recognition of the truth; in the second case, a whole series
+of egoistic acts.
+
+Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to
+recognize every truth.  There are truths which he has recognized
+long before or which have been handed down to him by education and
+tradition and accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths
+has become a habit, a second nature with him; and there are
+truths, only vaguely, as it were distantly, apprehended by him.
+The man is not free to refuse to recognize the first, nor to
+recognize the second class of truths.  But there are truths of a
+third kind, which have not yet become an unconscious motive of
+action, but yet have been revealed so clearly to him that he
+cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged to do one thing or
+the other, to recognize or not to recognize them.  And it is in
+regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests itself.
+
+Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the
+position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before
+him by the lantern he carries.  He does not see what is not yet
+lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed
+which is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey
+he sees what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always
+choose one side or the other of the road.
+
+There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's
+intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived,
+forgotten, and assimilated by him, and there are also certain
+truths that rise up before the light of his reason and require his
+recognition.  And it is in the recognition or non-recognition of
+these truths that what we call his freedom is manifested.
+
+All the difficulty and seeming insolubility of the question of the
+freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question
+imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth.
+
+Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we
+forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a
+continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of
+truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a
+truth more purified from them.
+
+Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same
+way he would not be free and would not even have any idea of
+freedom if the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been
+revealed once for all to him in all its purity without any
+admixture of error.
+
+But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual
+man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same
+way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree
+of truth, and growing more and more free from error.
+
+And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth.  Some
+truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the
+unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of
+being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet
+assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient
+clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or to
+refuse to recognize them.
+
+These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to
+refuse to recognize.
+
+The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting
+independently of the progress of life and the influences arising
+from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the
+truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful
+participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of
+the world; or on the other hand for refusing to recognize the
+truth, and so being a miserable and reluctant slave dragged
+whither he has no desire to go.
+
+Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to
+move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move.  And
+therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way
+of truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in
+life, others submitting involuntarily to the law of life.  Man's
+freedom lies in the power of this choice.
+
+This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to
+men that they do not notice it.  Some--the determinists--consider
+this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it
+at all.  Others--the champions of complete free will--keep their
+eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which
+seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom.
+
+This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of
+the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly
+freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or
+unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be
+inevitably forced to carry it out in life.
+
+A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain
+from moving the cart.  If he does not move forward the cart will
+knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or
+not.  But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be
+dragged with it.  And so it is with man.
+
+Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison
+with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only
+freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness
+attainable by man.
+
+And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of
+accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world.
+
+According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance
+of life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of
+effects, that is, of acts, has not the true life.  According to
+the Christian doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has
+transported his life to the domain in which it is free--the domain
+of causes, that is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession
+and realization in life of revealed truth.
+
+Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with
+actions depending on temporary causes outside himself.  He himself
+does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something.  In
+reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher
+power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of
+it.  Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the
+truth revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of
+universal life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent
+on conditions of space and time, but acts unconditioned by
+previous causes, acts which constitute the causes of everything
+else, and have an infinite, unlimited significance.
+
+"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
+by force." (Matt. xi. 12.)
+
+It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the
+recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of
+heaven is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and
+can be made in our times.
+
+Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble
+themselves about the general external conditions in which they are
+not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste
+on those material things to that in which they are free, to the
+recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and
+to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and
+hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end
+at once of the false organization of life which makes men
+miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future.
+And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that
+first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of
+development of their conscience.
+
+Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is
+saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a
+slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth
+already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds,
+thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with
+conscience may be established, and through this change of public
+opinion the whole order of life may be transformed.  And it
+depends upon us to make this effort.
+
+Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian
+truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and
+forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending
+that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in
+what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and
+boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should
+find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the
+same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread
+as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only
+waiting for others to recognize it also.
+
+Only let men cease to be hypocrites, and they would at once see
+that this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage,
+and is represented to them as something stable, necessary, and
+ordained of God, is already tottering and is only propped up by
+the falsehood of hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us,
+support it.
+
+But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break
+down the existing organization of life, have we the right to
+destroy it, without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its
+place?  What will become of human society when the existing order
+of things is at an end?
+
+   "What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we
+   are abandoning?
+
+   "Fear will come upon us--a void, a vast emptiness, freedom--how
+   are we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not
+   seeing hope of gain? . . . If Columbus had reasoned thus he
+   would never have weighed anchor.  It was madness to set off
+   upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no
+   one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was
+   doubtful.  By this madness he discovered a new world.
+   Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer
+   themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better
+   one--it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no
+   one to get humanity's new dwelling ready for it.  The future is
+   even worse than the ocean--there is nothing there--it will be
+   what men and circumstances make it.
+
+   "If you are content with the old world, try to preserve it, it
+   is very sick and cannot hold out much longer.  But if you
+   cannot bear to live in everlasting dissonance between your
+   beliefs and your life, thinking one thing and doing another,
+   get out of the mediaeval whited sepulchers, and face your
+   fears.  I know very well it is not easy.
+
+   "It is not a little thing to cut one's self off from all to
+   which a man has been accustomed from his birth, with which he
+   has grown up to maturity.  Men are ready for tremendous
+   sacrifices, but not for those which life demands of them.  Are
+   they ready to sacrifice modern civilization, their manner of
+   life, their religion, the received conventional morality?
+
+   "Are we ready to give up all the results we have attained with
+   such effort, results of which we have been boasting for three
+   centuries; to give up every convenience and charm of our
+   existence, to prefer savage youth to the senile decay of
+   civilization, to pull down the palace raised for us by our
+   ancestors only for the pleasure of having a hand in the
+   founding of a new house, which will doubtless be built long
+   after we are gone?" (Herzen, vol. v. p. 55.)
+
+Thus wrote almost half a century ago the Russian writer, who with
+prophetic insight saw clearly then, what even the most
+unreflecting man sees to-day, the impossibility, that is, of life
+continuing on its old basis, and the necessity of establishing new
+forms of life.
+
+It is clear now from the very simplest, most commonplace point of
+view, that it is madness to remain under the roof of a building
+which cannot support its weight, and that we must leave it.  And
+indeed it is difficult to imagine a position more wretched than
+that of the Christian world to-day, with its nations armed against
+one another, with its constantly increasing taxation to maintain
+its armies, with the hatred of the working class for the rich ever
+growing more intense, with the Damocles sword of war forever
+hanging over the heads of all, ready every instant to fall,
+certain to fall sooner or later.
+
+Hardly could any revolution be more disastrous for the great mass
+of the population than the present order or rather disorder of our
+life, with its daily sacrifices to exhausting and unnatural toil,
+to poverty, drunkenness, and profligacy, with all the horrors of
+the war that is at hand, which will swallow up in one year more
+victims than all the revolutions of the century.
+
+What will become of humanity if each of us performs the duty God
+demands of us through the conscience implanted within us?  Will
+not harm come if, being wholly in the power of a master, I carry
+out, in the workshop erected and directed by him, the orders he
+gives me, strange though they may seem to me who do not know the
+Master's final aims?
+
+But it is not even this question "What will happen?" that agitates
+men when they hesitate to fulfill the Master's will.  They are
+troubled by the question how to live without those habitual
+conditions of life which we call civilization, culture, art, and
+science.  We feel ourselves all the burdensomeness of life as it
+is; we see also that this organization of life must inevitably be
+our ruin, if it continues.  At the same time we want the
+conditions of our life which arise out of this organization--our
+civilization, culture, art, and science--to remain intact.  It is
+as though a man, living in an old house and suffering from cold
+and all sorts of inconvenience in it, knowing, too, that it is on
+the point of falling to pieces, should consent to its being
+rebuilt, but only on the condition that he should not be required
+to leave it: a condition which is equivalent to refusing to have
+it rebuilt at all.
+
+"But what if I leave the house and give up every convenience for a
+time, and the new house is not built, or is built on a different
+plan so that I do not find in it the comforts to which I am
+accustomed?"  But seeing that the materials and the builders are
+here, there is every likelihood that the new house will on the
+contrary be better built than the old one.  And at the same time,
+there is not only the likelihood but the certainty that the old
+house will fall down and crush those who remain within it.
+Whether the old habitual conditions of life are supported, or
+whether they are abolished and altogether new and better
+conditions arise; in any case, there is no doubt we shall be
+forced to leave the old forms of life which have become impossible
+and fatal, and must go forward to meet the future.
+
+"Civilization, art, science, culture, will disappear!"
+
+Yes, but all these we know are only various manifestations of
+truth, and the change that is before us is only to be made for the
+sake of a closer attainment and realization of truth.  How then
+can the manifestations of truth disappear through our realizing
+it?  These manifestations will be different, higher, better, but
+they will not cease to be.  Only what is false in them will be
+destroyed; all the truth there was in them will only be stronger
+and more flourishing.
+
+Take thought, oh, men, and have faith in the Gospel, in whose
+teaching is your happiness.  If you do not take thought, you will
+perish just as the men perished, slain by Pilate, or crushed by
+the tower of Siloam; as millions of men have perished, slayers and
+slain, executing and executed, torturers and tortured alike, and
+as the man foolishly perished, who filled his granaries full and
+made ready for a long life and died the very night that he planned
+to begin his life.  Take thought and have faith in the Gospel,
+Christ said eighteen hundred years ago, and he says it with even
+greater force now that the calamities foretold by him have come to
+pass, and the senselessness of our life has reached the furthest
+point of suffering and madness.
+
+Nowadays, after so many centuries of fruitless efforts to make our
+life secure by the pagan organization of life, it must be evident
+to everyone that all efforts in that direction only introduce
+fresh dangers into personal and social life, and do not render it
+more secure in any way.
+
+Whatever names we dignify ourselves with, whatever uniforms we wear,
+whatever priests we anoint ourselves before, however many millions we
+possess, however many guards are stationed along our road, however many
+policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called criminals,
+revolutionists, and anarchists we punish, whatever exploits we have
+performed, whatever states we may have founded, fortresses and towers we
+may have erected--from Babel to the Eiffel Tower--there are two
+inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which destroy its
+whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce upon each of
+us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, which so soon pass away
+and leave no trace. Whatever we may do--found companies, build palaces
+and monuments, write songs and poems--it is all not for long time. Soon
+it passes away, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal
+it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the significance of our
+life cannot lie in our personal fleshly existence, the prey of incurable
+suffering and inevitable death, nor in any social institution or
+organization. Whoever you may be who are reading these lines, think of
+your position and of your duties--not of your position as landowner,
+merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which
+has been temporarily allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary
+duties laid on you by those positions, but of your real positions in
+eternity as a creature who at the will of Someone has been called out of
+unconsciousness after an eternity of non-existence to which you may
+return at any moment at his will. Think of your duties--not your
+supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your
+business, as emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your
+real duties, the duties that follow from your real position as a being
+called into life and endowed with reason and love.
+
+Are you doing what he demands of you who has sent you into the
+world, and to whom you will soon return?  Are you doing what he
+wills?  Are you doing his will, when as landowner or manufacturer
+you rob the poor of the fruits of their toil, basing your life on
+this plunder of the workers, or when, as judge or governor, you
+ill treat men, sentence them to execution, or when as soldiers you
+prepare for war, kill and plunder?
+
+You will say that the world is so made that this is inevitable,
+and that you do not do this of your own free will, but because you
+are forced to do so.  But can it be that you have such a strong
+aversion to men's sufferings, ill treatment, and murder, that you
+have such an intense need of love and co-operation with your
+fellows that you see clearly that only by the recognition of the
+equality of all, and by mutual services, can the greatest possible
+happiness be realized; that your head and your heart, the faith
+you profess, and even science itself tell you the same thing, and
+yet that in spite of it all you can be forced by some confused and
+complicated reasoning to act in direct opposition to all this;
+that as landowner or capitalist you are bound to base your whole
+life on the oppression of the people; that as emperor or president
+you are to command armies, that is, to be the head and commander
+of murderers; or that as government official you are forced to
+take from the poor their last pence for rich men to profit and
+share them among themselves; or that as judge or juryman you could
+be forced to sentence erring men to ill treatment and death
+because the truth was not revealed to them, or above all, for that
+is the basis of all the evil, that you could be forced to become a
+soldier, and renouncing your free will and your human sentiments,
+could undertake to kill anyone at the command of other men?
+
+It cannot be.
+
+Even if you are told that all this is necessary for the
+maintenance of the existing order of things, and that this social
+order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and
+wars is necessary to society; that still greater disasters would
+ensue if this organization were destroyed; all that is said only
+by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer
+from it--and they are ten times as numerous--think and say quite
+the contrary.  And at the bottom of your heart you know yourself
+that it is not true, that the existing organization has outlived
+its time, and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles,
+and that consequently there is no obligation upon you to sacrifice
+your sentiments of humanity to support it.
+
+Above all, even if you allow that this organization is necessary,
+why do you believe it to be your duty to maintain it at the cost
+of your best feelings?  Who has made you the nurse in charge of
+this sick and moribund organization?  Not society nor the state
+nor anyone; no one has asked you to undertake this; you who fill
+your position of landowner, merchant, tzar, priest, or soldier
+know very well that you occupy that position by no means with the
+unselfish aim of maintaining the organization of life necessary to
+men's happiness, but simply in your own interests, to satisfy your
+own covetousness or vanity or ambition or indolence or cowardice.
+If you did not desire that position, you would not be doing your
+utmost to retain it.  Try the experiment of ceasing to commit the
+cruel, treacherous, and base actions that you are constantly
+committing in order to retain your position, and you will lose it
+at once.  Try the simple experiment, as a government official, of
+giving up lying, and refusing to take a part in executions and
+acts of violence; as a priest, of giving up deception; as a
+soldier, of giving up murder; as landowner or manufacturer, of
+giving up defending your property by fraud and force; and you will
+at once lose the position which you pretend is forced upon you,
+and which seems burdensome to you.
+
+A man cannot be placed against his will in a situation opposed to
+his conscience.
+
+If you find yourself in such a position it is not because it is
+necessary to anyone whatever, but simply because you wish it.  And
+therefore knowing that your position is repugnant to your heart
+and your head, and to your faith, and even to the science in which
+you believe, you cannot help reflecting upon the question whether
+in retaining it, and above all trying to justify it, you are doing
+what you ought to do.
+
+You might risk making a mistake if you had time to see and
+retrieve your fault, and if you ran the risk for something of some
+value.  But when you know beyond all doubt that you may disappear
+any minute, without the least possibility either for yourself or
+those you draw after you into your error, of retrieving the
+mistake, when you know that whatever you may do in the external
+organization of life it will all disappear as quickly and surely
+as you will yourself, and will leave no trace behind, it is clear
+that you have no reasonable ground for running the risk of such a
+fearful mistake.
+
+It would be perfectly simple and clear if you did not by your
+hypocrisy disguise the truth which has so unmistakably been
+revealed to us.
+
+Share all that you have with others, do not heap up riches, do not
+steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill, do not unto others
+what you would not they should do unto you, all that has been said
+not eighteen hundred, but five thousand years ago, and there could
+be no doubt of the truth of this law if it were not for hypocrisy.
+Except for hypocrisy men could not have failed, if not to put the
+law in practice, at least to recognize it, and admit that it is
+wrong not to put it in practice.
+
+But you will say that there is the public good to be considered,
+and that on that account one must not and ought not to conform to
+these principles; for the public good one may commit acts of
+violence and murder.  It is better for one man to die than that
+the whole people perish, you will say like Caiaphas, and you sign
+the sentence of death of one man, of a second, and a third; you
+load your gun against this man who is to perish for the public
+good, you imprison him, you take his possessions.  You say that
+you commit these acts of cruelty because you are a part of the
+society and of the state; that it is your duty to serve them, and
+as landowner, judge, emperor, or soldier to conform to their laws.
+But besides belonging to the state and having duties created by
+that position, you belong also to eternity and to God, who also
+lays duties upon you.  And just as your duties to your family and
+to society are subordinate to your superior duties to the state,
+in the same way the latter must necessarily be subordinated to the
+duties dictated to you by the eternal life and by God.  And just
+as it would be senseless to pull up the telegraph posts for fuel
+for a family or society and thus to increase its welfare at the
+expense of public interests, in the same way it is senseless to do
+violence, to execute, and to murder to increase the welfare of the
+nation, because that is at the expense of the interests of
+humanity.
+
+Your duties as a citizen cannot but be subordinated to the
+superior obligations of the eternal life of God, and cannot be in
+opposition to them.  As Christ's disciples said eighteen centuries
+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).
+
+It is asserted that, in order that the unstable order of things,
+established in one corner of the world for a few men, may not be
+destroyed, you ought to commit acts of violence which destroy the
+eternal and immutable order established by God and by reason.  Can
+that possibly be?
+
+And therefore you cannot but reflect on your position as
+landowner, manufacturer, judge, emperor, president, minister,
+priest, and soldier, which is bound up with violence, deception,
+and murder, and recognize its unlawfulness.
+
+I do not say that if you are a landowner you are bound to give up
+your lands immediately to the poor; if a capitalist or
+manufacturer, your money to your workpeople; or that if you are
+Tzar, minister, official, judge, or general, you are bound to
+renounce immediately the advantages of your position; or if a
+soldier, on whom all the system of violence is based, to refuse
+immediately to obey in spite of all the dangers of
+insubordination.
+
+If you do so, you will be doing the best thing possible.  But it
+may happen, and it is most likely, that you will not have the
+strength to do so.  You have relations, a family, subordinates and
+superiors; you are under an influence so powerful that you cannot
+shake it off; but you can always recognize the truth and refuse to
+tell a lie about it.  You need not declare that you are remaining
+a landowner, manufacturer, merchant, artist, or writer because it
+is useful to mankind; that you are governor, prosecutor, or tzar,
+not because it is agreeable to you, because you are used to it,
+but for the public good; that you continue to be a soldier, not
+from fear of punishment, but because you consider the army
+necessary to society.  You can always avoid lying in this way to
+yourself and to others, and you ought to do so; because the one
+aim of your life ought to be to purify yourself from falsehood and
+to confess the truth.  And you need only do that and your
+situation will change directly of itself.
+
+There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to
+you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is
+to recognize and profess the truth.
+
+And yet simply from the fact that other men as misguided and as
+pitiful creatures as yourself have made you soldier, tzar,
+landowner, capitalist, priest, or general, you undertake to commit
+acts of violence obviously opposed to your reason and your heart,
+to base your existence on the misfortunes of others, and above
+all, instead of filling the one duty of your life, recognizing and
+professing the truth, you feign not to recognize it and disguise
+it from yourself and others.
+
+And what are the conditions in which you are doing this?  You who
+may die any instant, you sign sentences of death, you declare war,
+you take part in it, you judge, you punish, you plunder the
+working people, you live luxuriously in the midst of the poor, and
+teach weak men who have confidence in you that this must be so,
+that the duty of men is to do this, and yet it may happen at the
+moment when you are acting thus that a bacterium or a bull may
+attack you and you will fall and die, losing forever the chance of
+repairing the harm you have done to others, and above all to
+yourself, in uselessly wasting a life which has been given you
+only once in eternity, without having accomplished the only thing
+you ought to have done.
+
+However commonplace and out of date it may seem to us, however
+confused we may be by hypocrisy and by the hypnotic suggestion
+which results from it, nothing can destroy the certainty of this
+simple and clearly defined truth.  No external conditions can
+guarantee our life, which is attended with inevitable sufferings
+and infallibly terminated by death, and which consequently can
+have no significance except in the constant accomplishment of what
+is demanded by the Power which has placed us in life with a sole
+certain guide--the rational conscience.
+
+That is why that Power cannot require of us what is irrational and
+impossible: the organization of our temporary external life, the
+life of society or of the state.  That Power demands of us only
+what is reasonable, certain, and possible: to serve the kingdom of
+God, that is, to contribute to the establishment of the greatest
+possible union between all living beings--a union possible only in
+the truth; and to recognize and to profess the revealed truth,
+which is always in our power.
+
+"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and
+all these things shall be added unto you." (Matt. vi. 33.)
+
+The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to
+the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by
+the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
+
+"The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall
+they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is
+within you." (Luke xvii. 20, 21.)
+
+THE END.
+
+
+--------------------------------------------------------------------
+[Transcribists note: This translation contains what seems to my
+early 21st Century perception as mistakes, both in typography and
+in standardness of language.  I have left issues of standard
+language uncorrected, and have only fixed typographical errors
+in which the word was nearly unrecognizable, but clear from context.
+
+An example: "...those who have seized power AUD who keep it..." was
+changed to: "...those who have seized power AND who keep it...".
+
+Another example: where he meant "village" the book has "vilage";
+I left such misspellings as is.
+
+In some cases, missing punctuation in a series was corrected, where
+every other member of the series is punctuated: 1. 2. 3  4.
+If I had a doubt, nothing was changed.
+
+I indented paragraphs, for clarity, when Tolstoy quotes large blocks
+of text from other authors.  However, often Tolsoy interspersed
+quoted material with his commentary [as when talking about the author
+Farrar].  I was not able to separate these for fear of editing the
+author.
+
+Italics were represented here, with the substitution of capital
+letters.
+
+Translations for long passages of French follow in the footnotes.]
+--------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Kingdom of God Is Within You, by
+graf Leo Tolstoy
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