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 mediæval 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-day, 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 serves 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 of 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--if
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 mediæval
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
position of Europe more 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, we 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 Abbé 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.