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 stalk, 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
assimulating 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 mediæval 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 links 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
superstitions 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.[14]
[14] 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 putting the truth
of the second half to the test of experience.