In the same way the judges, who wrongfully adjudged the forest to the

proprietor, did so simply because they fancied themselves not simply

men like everyone else, and so bound to be guided in everything only

by what they consider right, but, under the intoxicating influence of

power, imagined themselves the representatives of the justice which

cannot err; while under the intoxicating influence of servility they

imagined themselves bound to carry out to the letter the instructions

inscribed in a certain book, the so-called law. In the same way all

who take part in such an affair, from the highest representative of

authority who signs his assent to the report, from the superintendent

presiding at the recruiting sessions, and the priest who deludes the

recruits, to the lowest soldier who is ready now to fire on his own

brothers, imagine, in the intoxication of power or of servility, that

they are some conventional characters. They do not face the question

that is presented to them, whether or not they ought to take part

in what their conscience judges an evil act, but fancy themselves

various conventional personages--one as the Tzar, God's anointed, an

exceptional being, called to watch over the happiness of one hundred

millions of men; another as the representative of nobility; another

as a priest, who has received special grace by his ordination;

another as a soldier, bound by his military oath to carry out all he

is commanded without reflection.

Only under the intoxication of the power or the servility of their

imagined positions could all these people act as they do.

Were not they all firmly convinced that their respective vocations

of tzar, minister, governor, judge, nobleman, landowner,

superintendent, officer, and soldier are something real and

important, not one of them would even think without horror and

aversion of taking part in what they do now.

The conventional positions, established hundreds of years, recognized

for centuries and by everyone, distinguished by special names and

dresses, and, moreover, confirmed by every kind of solemnity,

have so penetrated into men's minds through their senses, that,

forgetting the ordinary conditions of life common to all, they look

at themselves and everyone only from this conventional point of view,

and are guided in their estimation of their own actions and those of

others by this conventional standard.

Thus we see a man of perfect sanity and ripe age, simply because

he is decked out with some fringe, or embroidered keys on his coat

tails, or a colored ribbon only fit for some gayly dressed girl,

and is told that he is a general, a chamberlain, a knight of the

order of St. Andrew, or some similar nonsense, suddenly become

self-important, proud, and even happy, or, on the contrary, grow

melancholy and unhappy to the point of falling ill, because he has

failed to obtain the expected decoration or title. Or what is still

more striking, a young man, perfectly sane in every other matter,

independent and beyond the fear of want, simply because he has been

appointed judicial prosecutor or district commander, separates a poor

widow from her little children, and shuts her up in prison, leaving

her children uncared for, all because the unhappy woman carried on a

secret trade in spirits, and so deprived the revenue of twenty-five

rubles, and he does not feel the least pang of remorse. Or what is

still more amazing; a man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted,

simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told

that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people,

and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it,

but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not

fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death,

and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple

merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not

simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.

This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization

is usually expressed in the following words: "As a man, I pity

him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it

is my duty to kill or torture him." Just as though there were some

positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the

obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity.

So, for example, in the case before us, men are going to murder and

torture the famishing, and they admit that in the dispute between

the peasants and the landowner the peasants are right (all those

in command said as much to me). They know that the peasants are

wretched, poor, and hungry, and the landowner is rich and inspires no

sympathy. Yet they are all going to kill the peasants to secure three

thousand rubles for the landowner, only because at that moment they

fancy themselves not men but governor, official, general of police,

officer, and soldier, respectively, and consider themselves bound

to obey, not the eternal demands of the conscience of man, but the

casual, temporary demands of their positions as officers or soldiers.

Strange as it may seem, the sole explanation of this astonishing

phenomenon is that they are in the condition of the hypnotized, who,

they say, feel and act like the creatures they are commanded by the

hypnotizer to represent. When, for instance, it is suggested to the

hypnotized subject that he is lame, he begins to walk lame, that he

is blind, and he cannot see, that he is a wild beast, and he begins

to bite. This is the state, not only of those who were going on this

expedition, but of all men who fulfill their state and social duties

in preference to and in detriment of their human duties.

The essence of this state is that under the influence of one

suggestion they lose the power of criticising their actions, and

therefore do, without thinking, everything consistent with the

suggestion to which they are led by example, precept, or insinuation.

The difference between those hypnotized by scientific men and those

under the influence of the state hypnotism, is that an imaginary

position is suggested to the former suddenly by one person in a very

brief space of time, and so the hypnotized state appears to us in a

striking and surprising form, while the imaginary position suggested

by state influence is induced slowly, little by little, imperceptibly

from childhood, sometimes during years, or even generations, and not

in one person alone but in a whole society.

"But," it will be said, "at all times, in all societies, the

majority of persons--all the children, all the women absorbed in the

bearing and rearing of the young, all the great mass of the laboring

population, who are under the necessity of incessant and fatiguing

physical labor, all those of weak character by nature, all those who

are abnormally enfeebled intellectually by the effects of nicotine,

alcohol, opium, or other intoxicants--are always in a condition of

incapacity for independent thought, and are either in subjection

to those who are on a higher intellectual level, or else under the

influence of family or social traditions, of what is called public

opinion, and there is nothing unnatural or incongruous in their

subjection."

And truly there is nothing unnatural in it, and the tendency of men

of small intellectual power to follow the lead of those on a higher

level of intelligence is a constant law, and it is owing to it

that men can live in societies and on the same principles at all.

The minority consciously adopt certain rational principles through

their correspondence with reason, while the majority act on the same

principles unconsciously because it is required by public opinion.

Such subjection to public opinion on the part of the unintellectual

does not assume an unnatural character till the public opinion is

split into two.

But there are times when a higher truth, revealed at first to a few

persons, gradually gains ground till it has taken hold of such a

number of persons that the old public opinion, founded on a lower

order of truths, begins to totter and the new is ready to take its

place, but has not yet been firmly established. It is like the

spring, this time of transition, when the old order of ideas has not

quite broken up and the new has not quite gained a footing. Men begin

to criticise their actions in the light of the new truth, but in the

meantime in practice, through inertia and tradition, they continue

to follow the principles which once represented the highest point of

rational consciousness, but are now in flagrant contradiction with it.

Then men are in an abnormal, wavering condition, feeling the

necessity of following the new ideal, and yet not bold enough to

break with the old-established traditions.

Such is the attitude in regard to the truth of Christianity not only

of the men in the Toula train, but of the majority of men of our

times, alike of the higher and the lower orders.

Those of the ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable

justification for the profitable positions they occupy, are forced,

in order to keep them, to stifle their higher rational faculty

of loving, and to persuade themselves that their positions are

indispensable. And those of the lower classes, exhausted by toil

and brutalized of set purpose, are kept in a permanent deception,

practiced deliberately and continuously by the higher classes upon

them.

Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradictions with

which our life is full, and of which a striking example was presented

to me by the expedition I met on the 9th of September; good, peaceful

men, known to me personally, going with untroubled tranquillity to

perpetrate the most beastly, senseless, and vile of crimes. Had not

they some means of stifling their conscience, not one of them would

be capable of committing a hundredth part of such a villainy.

It is not that they have not a conscience which forbids them from

acting thus, just as, even three or four hundred years ago, when

people burnt men at the stake and put them to the rack they had a

conscience which prohibited it; the conscience is there, but it has

been put to sleep--in those in command by what the psychologists call

auto-suggestion; in the soldiers, by the direct conscious hypnotizing

exerted by the higher classes.

Though asleep, the conscience is there, and in spite of the hypnotism

it is already speaking in them, and it may awake.

All these men are in a position like that of a man under hypnotism,

commanded to do something opposed to everything he regards as good

and rational, such as to kill his mother or his child. The hypnotized

subject feels himself bound to carry out the suggestion--he thinks he

cannot stop--but the nearer he gets to the time and the place of the

action, the more the benumbed conscience begins to stir, to resist,

and to try to awake. And no one can say beforehand whether he will

carry out the suggestion or not; which will gain the upper hand, the

rational conscience or the irrational suggestion. It all depends on

their relative strength.

That is just the case with the men in the Toula train and in general

with everyone carrying out acts of state violence in our day.

There was a time when men who set out with the object of murder and

violence, to make an example, did not return till they had carried

out their object, and then, untroubled by doubts or scruples,

having calmly flogged men to death, they returned home and caressed

their children, laughed, amused themselves, and enjoyed the

peaceful pleasures of family life. In those days it never struck

the landowners and wealthy men who profited by these crimes, that

the privileges they enjoyed had any direct connection with these

atrocities. But now it is no longer so. Men know now, or are not far

from knowing, what they are doing and for what object they do it.

They can shut their eyes and force their conscience to be still,

but so long as their eyes are opened and their conscience undulled,

they must all--those who carry out and those who profit by these

crimes alike--see the import of them. Sometimes they realize it only

after the crime has been perpetrated, sometimes they realize it

just before its perpetration. Thus those who commanded the recent

acts of violence in Nijni-Novgorod, Saratov, Orel, and the Yuzovsky

factory realized their significance only after their perpetration,

and now those who commanded and those who carried out these crimes

are ashamed before public opinion and their conscience. I have talked

to soldiers who had taken part in these crimes, and they always

studiously turned the conversation off the subject, and when they

spoke of it it was with horror and bewilderment. There are cases,

too, when men come to themselves just before the perpetration of the

crime. Thus I know the case of a sergeant-major who had been beaten

by two peasants during the repression of disorder and had made a

complaint. The next day, after seeing the atrocities perpetrated on

the other peasants, he entreated the commander of his company to tear

up his complaint and let off the two peasants. I know cases when

soldiers, commanded to fire, have refused to obey, and I know many

cases of officers who have refused to command expeditions for torture

and murder. So that men sometimes come to their senses long before

perpetrating the suggested crime, sometimes at the very moment before

perpetrating it, sometimes only afterward.

The men traveling in the Toula train were going with the object of

killing and injuring their fellow-creatures, but none could tell

whether they would carry out their object or not. However obscure

his responsibility for the affair is to each, and however strong

the idea instilled into all of them that they are not men, but

governors, officials, officers, and soldiers, and as such beings can

violate every human duty, the nearer they approach the place of the

execution, the stronger their doubts as to its being right, and this

doubt will reach its highest point when the very moment for carrying

it out has come.

The governor, in spite of all the stupefying effect of his

surroundings, cannot help hesitating when the moment comes to give

final decisive command. He knows that the action of the Governor of

Orel has called down upon him the disapproval of the best people, and

he himself, influenced by the public opinion of the circles in which

he moves, has more than once expressed his disapprobation of him. He

knows that the prosecutor, who ought to have come, flatly refused to

have anything to do with it, because he regarded it as disgraceful.

He knows, too, that there may be changes any day in the government,

and that what was a ground for advancement yesterday may be the cause

of disgrace to-morrow. And he knows that there is a press, if not in

Russia, at least abroad, which may report the affair and cover him

with ignominy forever. He is already conscious of a change in public

opinion which condemns what was formerly a duty. Moreover, he cannot

feel fully assured that his soldiers will at the last moment obey

him. He is wavering, and none can say beforehand what he will do.

All the officers and functionaries who accompany him experience in

greater or less degree the same emotions. In the depths of their

hearts they all know that what they are doing is shameful, that

to take part in it is a discredit and blemish in the eyes of some

people whose opinion they value. They know that after murdering and

torturing the defenseless, each of them will be ashamed to face his

betrothed or the woman he is courting. And besides, they too, like

the governor, are doubtful whether the soldiers' obedience to orders

can be reckoned on. What a contrast with the confident air they all

put on as they sauntered about the station and platform! Inwardly

they were not only in a state of suffering but even of suspense.

Indeed they only assumed this bold and composed manner to conceal the

wavering within. And this feeling increased as they drew near the

scene of action.

And imperceptible as it was, and strange as it seems to say so, all

that mass of lads, the soldiers, who seemed so submissive, were in

precisely the same condition.

These are not the soldiers of former days, who gave up the natural

life of industry and devoted their whole existence to debauchery,

plunder, and murder, like the Roman legionaries or the warriors of

the Thirty Years' War, or even the soldiers of more recent times who

served for twenty-five years in the army. They have mostly been only

lately taken from their families, and are full of the recollections

of the good, rational, natural life they have left behind them.

All these lads, peasants for the most part, know what is the business

they have come about; they know that the landowners always oppress

their brothers the peasants, and that therefore it is most likely

the same thing here. Moreover, a majority of them can now read,

and the books they read are not all such as exalt a military life;

there are some which point out its immorality. Among them are often

free-thinking comrades--who have enlisted voluntarily--or young

officers of liberal ideas, and already the first germ of doubt has

been sown in regard to the unconditional legitimacy and glory of

their occupation.

It is true that they have all passed through that terrible, skillful

education, elaborated through centuries, which kills all initiative

in a man, and that they are so trained to mechanical obedience

that at the word of command: "Fire!--All the line!--Fire!" and so

on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements

will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the

sand for amusement, it means firing on their broken-down, exploited

fathers and brothers whom they see there in the crowd, with women and

children shouting and waving their arms. Here they are--one with his

scanty beard and patched coat and plaited shoes of reed, just like

the father left at home in Kazan or Riazan province; one with gray

beard and bent back, leaning on a staff like the old grand-father;

one, a young fellow in boots and a red shirt, just as he was himself

a year ago--he, the soldier who must fire upon him. There, too, a

woman in reed shoes and _panyova_, just like the mother left at home.

Is it possible they must fire on them? And no one knows what each

soldier will do at the last minute. The least word, the slightest

allusion would be enough to stop them.

At the last moment they will all find themselves in the position of

a hypnotized man to whom it has been suggested to chop a log, who

coming up to what has been indicated to him as a log, with the ax

already lifted to strike, sees that it is not a log but his sleeping

brother. He may perform the act that has been suggested to him, and

he may come to his senses at the moment of performing it. In the

same way all these men may come to themselves in time or they may go

on to the end.

If they do not come to themselves, the most fearful crime will be

committed, as in Orel, and then the hypnotic suggestion under which

they act will be strengthened in all other men. If they do come to

themselves, not only this terrible crime will not be perpetrated,

but many also who hear of the turn the affair has taken will be

emancipated from the hypnotic influence in which they were held, or

at least will be nearer being emancipated from it.

Even if a few only come to themselves, and boldly explain to the

others all the wickedness of such a crime, the influence of these few

may rouse the others to shake off the controlling suggestion, and the

atrocity will not be perpetrated.

More than that, if a few men, even of those who are not taking part

in the affair but are only present at the preparations for it, or

have heard of such things being done in the past, do not remain

indifferent but boldly and plainly express their detestation of such

crimes to those who have to execute them, and point out to them all

the senselessness, cruelty, and wickedness of such acts, that alone

will be productive of good.

That was what took place in the instance before us. It was enough for

a few men, some personally concerned in the affair and others simply

outsiders, to express their disapproval of floggings that had taken

place elsewhere, and their contempt and loathing for those who had

taken part in inflicting them, for a few persons in the Toula case

to express their repugnance to having any share in it; for a lady

traveling by the train, and a few other bystanders at the station,

to express to those who formed the expedition their disgust at

what they were doing; for one of the commanders of a company, who

was asked for troops for the restoration of order, to reply that

soldiers ought not to be butchers--and thanks to these and a few

other seemingly insignificant influences brought to bear on these

hypnotized men, the affair took a completely different turn, and the

troops, when they reached the place, did not inflict any punishment,

but contented themselves with cutting down the forest and giving it

to the landowner.

Had not a few persons had a clear consciousness that what they were

doing was wrong, and consequently influenced one another in that

direction, what was done at Orel would have taken place at Toula.

Had this consciousness been still stronger, and had the influence

exerted been therefore greater than it was, it might well have been

that the governor with his troops would not even have ventured to cut

down the forest and give it to the landowner. Had that consciousness

been stronger still, it might well have been that the governor would

not have ventured to go to the scene of action at all; even that the

minister would not have ventured to form this decision or the Tzar to

ratify it.

All depends, therefore, on the strength of the consciousness of

Christian truth on the part of each individual man.

And, therefore, one would have thought that the efforts of all men

of the present day who profess to wish to work for the welfare of

humanity would have been directed to strengthening this consciousness

of Christian truth in themselves and others.

But, strange to say, it is precisely those people who profess most

anxiety for the amelioration of human life, and are regarded as

the leaders of public opinion, who assert that there is no need

to do that, and that there are other more effective means for the

amelioration of men's condition. They affirm that the amelioration

of human life is effected not by the efforts of individual men, to

recognize and propagate the truth, but by the gradual modification

of the general conditions of life, and that therefore the efforts

of individuals should be directed to the gradual modification

of external conditions for the better. For every advocacy of a

truth inconsistent with the existing order by an individual is,

they maintain, not only useless but injurious, since it provokes

coercive measures on the part of the authorities, restricting these

individuals from continuing any action useful to society. According

to this doctrine all modifications in human life are brought about by

precisely the same laws as in the life of the animals.

So that, according to this doctrine, all the founders of religions,

such as Moses and the prophets, Confucius, Lao-Tse, Buddha, Christ,

and others, preached their doctrines and their followers accepted

them, not because they loved the truth, but because the political,

social, and above all economic conditions of the peoples among whom

these religions arose were favorable for their origination and

development.

And therefore the chief efforts of the man who wishes to serve

society and improve the condition of humanity ought, according to

this doctrine, to be directed not to the elucidation and propagation

of truth, but to the improvement of the external political,

social, and above all economic conditions. And the modification

of these conditions is partly effected by serving the government

and introducing liberal and progressive principles into it, partly

in promoting the development of industry and the propagation of

socialistic ideas, and most of all by the diffusion of science.

According to this theory it is of no consequence whether you profess

the truth revealed to you, and therefore realize it in your life, or

at least refrain from committing actions opposed to the truth, such

as serving the government and strengthening its authority when you

regard it as injurious, profiting by the capitalistic system when

you regard it as wrong, showing veneration for various ceremonies

which you believe to be degrading superstitions, giving support to

the law when you believe it to be founded on error, serving as a

soldier, taking oaths, and lying, and lowering yourself generally. It

is useless to refrain from all that; what is of use is not altering

the existing forms of life, but submitting to them against your own

convictions, introducing liberalism into the existing institutions,

promoting commerce, the propaganda of socialism, and the triumphs of

what is called science, and the diffusion of education. According

to this theory one can remain a landowner, merchant, manufacturer,

judge, official in government pay, officer or soldier, and still be

not only a humane man, but even a socialist and revolutionist.

Hypocrisy, which had formerly only a religious basis in the doctrine

of original sin, the redemption, and the Church, has in our day

gained a new scientific basis and has consequently caught in its

nets all those who had reached too high a stage of development to be

able to find support in religious hypocrisy. So that while in former

days a man who professed the religion of the Church could take part

in all the crimes of the state, and profit by them, and still regard

himself as free from any taint of sin, so long as he fulfilled the

external observances of his creed, nowadays all who do not believe in

the Christianity of the Church, find similar well-founded irrefutable

reasons in science for regarding themselves as blameless and even

highly moral in spite of their participation in the misdeeds of

government and the advantages they gain from them.

A rich landowner--not only in Russia, but in France, England,

Germany, or America--lives on the rents exacted from the people

living on his land, and robs these generally poverty-stricken people

of all he can get from them. This man's right of property in the land

rests on the fact that at every effort on the part of the oppressed

people, without his consent, to make use of the land he considers

his, troops are called out to subject them to punishment and murder.

One would have thought that it was obvious that a man living in this

way was an evil, egoistic creature and could not possibly consider

himself a Christian or a liberal. One would have supposed it evident

that the first thing such a man must do, if he wishes to approximate

to Christianity or liberalism, would be to cease to plunder and ruin

men by means of acts of state violence in support of his claim to the

land. And so it would be if it were not for the logic of hypocrisy,

which reasons that from a religious point of view possession or

non-possession of land is of no consequence for salvation, and from

the scientific point of view, giving up the ownership of land is a

useless individual renunciation, and that the welfare of mankind is

not promoted in that way, but by a gradual modification of external

forms. And so we see this man, without the least trouble of mind

or doubt that people will believe in his sincerity, organizing an

agricultural exhibition, or a temperance society, or sending some

soup and stockings by his wife or children to three old women, and

boldly in his family, in drawing rooms, in committees, and in the

press, advocating the Gospel or humanitarian doctrine of love for

one's neighbor in general and the agricultural laboring population

in particular whom he is continually exploiting and oppressing.

And other people who are in the same position as he believe him,

commend him, and solemnly discuss with him measures for ameliorating

the condition of the working-class, on whose exploitation their

whole life rests, devising all kinds of possible methods for this,

except the one without which all improvement of their condition

is impossible, _i. e._, refraining from taking from them the land

necessary for their subsistence. (A striking example of this

hypocrisy was the solicitude displayed by the Russian landowners last

year, their efforts to combat the famine which they had caused, and

by which they profited, selling not only bread at the highest price,

but even potato haulm at five rubles the dessiatine (about 2-4/5

acres) for fuel to the freezing peasants.)

Or take a merchant whose whole trade--like all trade indeed--is

founded on a series of trickery, by means of which, profiting by the

ignorance or need of others, he buys goods below their value and

sells them again above their value. One would have fancied it obvious

that a man whose whole occupation was based on what in his own

language is called swindling, if it is done under other conditions,

ought to be ashamed of his position, and could not any way, while he

continues a merchant, profess himself a Christian or a liberal.

But the sophistry of hypocrisy reasons that the merchant can pass for

a virtuous man without giving up his pernicious course of action;

a religious man need only have faith and a liberal man need only

promote the modification of external conditions--the progress of

industry. And so we see the merchant (who often goes further and

commits acts of direct dishonesty, selling adulterated goods, using

false weights and measures, and trading in products injurious to

health, such as alcohol and opium) boldly regarding himself and

being regarded by others, so long as he does not directly deceive

his colleagues in business, as a pattern of probity and virtue. And

if he spends a thousandth part of his stolen wealth on some public

institution, a hospital or museum or school, then he is even regarded

as the benefactor of the people on the exploitation and corruption of

whom his whole prosperity has been founded: if he sacrifices, too, a

portion of his ill-gotten gains on a Church and the poor, then he is

an exemplary Christian.

A manufacturer is a man whose whole income consists of value

squeezed out of the workmen, and whose whole occupation is based

on forced, unnatural labor, exhausting whole generations of men.

It would seem obvious that if this man professes any Christian

or liberal principles, he must first of all give up ruining human

lives for his own profit. But by the existing theory he is promoting

industry, and he ought not to abandon his pursuit. It would even be

injuring society for him to do so. And so we see this man, the harsh

slave-driver of thousands of men, building almshouses with little

gardens two yards square for the workmen broken down in toiling for

him, and a bank, and a poorhouse, and a hospital--fully persuaded

that he has amply expiated in this way for all the human lives

morally and physically ruined by him--and calmly going on with his

business, taking pride in it.

Any civil, religious, or military official in government employ, who

serves the state from vanity, or, as is most often the case, simply

for the sake of the pay wrung from the harassed and toilworn working

classes (all taxes, however raised, always fall on labor), if he, as

is very seldom the case, does not directly rob the government in the

usual way, considers himself, and is considered by his fellows, as a

most useful and virtuous member of society.

A judge or a public prosecutor knows that through his sentence or his

prosecution hundreds or thousands of poor wretches are at once torn

from their families and thrown into prison, where they may go out of

their minds, kill themselves with pieces of broken glass, or starve

themselves; he knows that they have wives and mothers and children,

disgraced and made miserable by separation from them, vainly begging

for pardon for them or some alleviation of their sentence, and this

judge or this prosecutor is so hardened in his hypocrisy that he and

his fellows and his wife and his household are all fully convinced

that he may be a most exemplary man. According to the metaphysics of

hypocrisy it is held that he is doing a work of public utility. And

this man who has ruined hundreds, thousands of men, who curse him and

are driven to desperation by his action, goes to mass, a smile of

shining benevolence on his smooth face, in perfect faith in good and

in God, listens to the Gospel, caresses his children, preaches moral

principles to them, and is moved by imaginary sufferings.

All these men and those who depend on them, their wives, tutors,

children, cooks, actors, jockeys, and so on, are living on the blood

which by one means or another, through one set of blood-suckers or

another, is drawn out of the working class, and every day their

pleasures cost hundreds or thousands of days of labor. They see the

sufferings and privations of these laborers and their children,

their aged, their wives, and their sick, they know the punishments

inflicted on those who resist this organized plunder, and far from

decreasing, far from concealing their luxury, they insolently

display it before these oppressed laborers who hate them, as though

intentionally provoking them with the pomp of their parks and

palaces, their theaters, hunts, and races. At the same time they

continue to persuade themselves and others that they are all much

concerned about the welfare of these working classes, whom they have

always trampled under their feet, and on Sundays, richly dressed,

they drive in sumptuous carriages to the houses of God built in very

mockery of Christianity, and there listen to men, trained to this

work of deception, who in white neckties or in brocaded vestments,

according to their denomination, preach the love for their neighbor

which they all gainsay in their lives. And these people have so

entered into their part that they seriously believe that they really

are what they pretend to be.

The universal hypocrisy has so entered into the flesh and blood of

all classes of our modern society, it has reached such a pitch that

nothing in that way can rouse indignation. Hypocrisy in the Greek

means "acting," and acting--playing a part--is always possible.

The representatives of Christ give their blessing to the ranks of

murderers holding their guns loaded against their brothers; "for

prayer" priests, ministers of various Christian sects are always

present, as indispensably as the hangman, at executions, and sanction

by their presence the compatibility of murder with Christianity

(a clergyman assisted at the attempt at murder by electricity in

America)--but such facts cause no one any surprise.

There was recently held at Petersburg an international exhibition of

instruments of torture, handcuffs, models of solitary cells, that

is to say instruments of torture worse than knouts or rods, and

sensitive ladies and gentlemen went and amused themselves by looking

at them.

No one is surprised that together with its recognition of liberty,

equality, and fraternity, liberal science should prove the necessity

of war, punishment, customs, the censure, the regulation of

prostitution, the exclusion of cheap foreign laborers, the hindrance

of emigration, the justifiableness of colonization, based on

poisoning and destroying whole races of men called savages, and so on.

People talk of the time when all men shall profess what is called

Christianity (that is, various professions of faith hostile to one

another), when all shall be well-fed and clothed, when all shall

be united from one end of the world to the other by telegraphs

and telephones, and be able to communicate by balloons, when all

the working classes are permeated by socialistic doctrines, when

the Trades Unions possess so many millions of members and so many

millions of rubles, when everyone is educated and all can read

newspapers and learn all the sciences.

But what good or useful thing can come of all these improvements, if

men do not speak and act in accordance with what they believe to be

the truth?

The condition of men is the result of their disunion. Their disunion

results from their not following the truth which is one, but

falsehoods which are many. The sole means of uniting men is their

union in the truth. And therefore the more sincerely men strive

toward the truth, the nearer they get to unity.

But how can men be united in the truth or even approximate to it, if

they do not even express the truth they know, but hold that there is

no need to do so, and pretend to regard as truth what they believe to

be false?

And therefore no improvement is possible so long as men are

hypocritical and hide the truth from themselves, so long as they do

not recognize that their union and therefore their welfare is only

possible in the truth, and do not put the recognition and profession

of the truth revealed to them higher than everything else.

All the material improvements that religious and scientific men can

dream of may be accomplished; all men may accept Christianity, and

all the reforms desired by the Bellamys may be brought about with

every possible addition and improvement, but if the hypocrisy which

rules nowadays still exists, if men do not profess the truth they

know, but continue to feign belief in what they do not believe and

veneration for what they do not respect, their condition will remain

the same, or even grow worse and worse. The more men are freed

from privation; the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers,

and journals there are; the more means there will be of diffusing

inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and

consequently miserable will men become, which indeed is what we see

actually taking place.

All these material reforms may be realized, but the position of

humanity will not be improved. But only let each man, according

to his powers, at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or

at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the

place of the truth, and at once, in this year 1893, we should see

such reforms as we do not dare to hope for within a century--the

emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon earth.

Not without good reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening

reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft

nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the special

falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes

them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in

their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all

real human life, and debars them from all progress toward perfection.

Those who do evil through ignorance of the truth provoke sympathy

with their victims and repugnance for their actions, they do harm

only to those they attack; but those who know the truth and do

evil masked by hypocrisy, injure themselves and their victims, and

thousands of other men as well who are led astray by the falsehood

with which the wrongdoing is disguised.

Thieves, robbers, murderers, and cheats, who commit crimes recognized

by themselves and everyone else as evil, serve as an example of

what ought not to be done, and deter others from similar crimes.

But those who commit the same thefts, robberies, murders, and other

crimes, disguising them under all kinds of religious or scientific

or humanitarian justifications, as all landowners, merchants,

manufacturers, and government officials do, provoke others to

imitation, and so do harm not only to those who are directly the

victims of their crimes, but to thousands and millions of men whom

they corrupt by obliterating their sense of the distinction between

right and wrong.

A single fortune gained by trading in goods necessary to the

people or in goods pernicious in their effects, or by financial

speculations, or by acquiring land at a low price the value of which

is increased by the needs of the population, or by an industry

ruinous to the health and life of those employed in it, or by

military or civil service of the state, or by any employment which

trades on men's evil instincts--a single fortune acquired in any of

these ways, not only with the sanction, but even with the approbation

of the leading men in society, and masked with an ostentation of

philanthropy, corrupts men incomparably more than millions of thefts

and robberies committed against the recognized forms of law and

punishable as crimes.

A single execution carried out by prosperous educated men

uninfluenced by passion, with the approbation and assistance of

Christian ministers, and represented as something necessary and even

just, is infinitely more corrupting and brutalizing to men than

thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the

influence of passion. An execution such as was proposed by Joukovsky,

which would produce even a sentiment of religious emotion in the

spectators, would be one of the most perverting actions imaginable.

(_See_ vol. iv. of the works of Joukovsky.)

Every war, even the most humanely conducted, with all its ordinary

consequences, the destruction of harvests, robberies, the license and

debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its necessity

and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits,

the worship of the flag, the patriotic sentiments, the feigned

solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more in one year to

pervert men's minds than thousands of robberies, murders, and arsons

perpetrated during hundreds of years by individual men under the

influence of passion.

The luxurious expenditure of a single respectable and so-called

honorable family, even within the conventional limits, consuming

as it does the produce of as many days of labor as would suffice

to provide for thousands living in privation near, does more to

pervert men's minds than thousands of the violent orgies of coarse

tradespeople, officers, and workmen of drunken and debauched habits,

who smash up glasses and crockery for amusement.

One solemn religious procession, one service, one sermon from the

altar-steps or the pulpit, in which the preacher does not believe,

produces incomparably more evil than thousands of swindling tricks,

adulteration of food, and so on.

We talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But the hypocrisy of

our society far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of

the Pharisees. They had at least an external religious law, the

fulfillment of which hindered them from seeing their obligations

to their neighbors. Moreover, these obligations were not nearly so

clearly defined in their day. Nowadays we have no such religious law

to exonerate us from our duties to our neighbors (I am not speaking

now of the coarse and ignorant persons who still fancy their sins can

be absolved by confession to a priest or by the absolution of the

Pope). On the contrary, the law of the Gospel which we all profess

in one form or another directly defines these duties. Besides, the

duties which had then been only vaguely and mystically expressed by

a few prophets have now been so clearly formulated, have become such

truisms, that they are repeated even by schoolboys and journalists.

And so it would seem that men of to-day cannot pretend that they do

not know these duties.

A man of the modern world who profits by the order of things based on

violence, and at the same time protests that he loves his neighbor

and does not observe what he is doing in his daily life to his

neighbor, is like a brigand who has spent his life in robbing men,

and who, caught at last, knife in hand, in the very act of striking

his shrieking victim, should declare that he had no idea that what he

was doing was disagreeable to the man he had robbed and was prepared

to murder. Just as this robber and murderer could not deny what

was evident to everyone, so it would seem that a man living upon

the privations of the oppressed classes cannot persuade himself and

others that he desires the welfare of those he plunders, and that he

does not know how the advantages he enjoys are obtained.

It is impossible to convince ourselves that we do not know that there

are a hundred thousand men in prison in Russia alone to guarantee

the security of our property and tranquillity, and that we do not

know of the law tribunals in which we take part, and which, at our

initiative, condemn those who have attacked our property or our

security to prison, exile, or forced labor, whereby men no worse than

those who condemn them are ruined and corrupted; or that we do not

know that we only possess all that we do possess because it has been

acquired and is defended for us by murder and violence.

We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches

up and down beneath our windows to guarantee our security while we

eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or

that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make

their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is

attacked.

We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our

dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the

ball, the Christmas fête, the promenade, the races or the hunt,

thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will

shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and

who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready

to interrupt them instantly, were not the policeman and the soldier

there prepared to run up at our first call for help.

And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act

cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob

his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too,

it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers

and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense

against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fêtes and reviews;

we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that

men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their

subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like

working underground, in the water, or in stifling heat, for ten to

fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects

for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so

obvious. Yet it is denied.

Still, there are, among the rich, especially among the young, and

among women, persons whom I am glad to meet more and more frequently,

who, when they are shown in what way and at what cost their pleasures

are purchased, do not try to conceal the truth, but hiding their

heads in their hands, cry: "Ah! don't speak of that. If it is so,

life is impossible." But though there are such sincere people who

even though they cannot renounce their fault, at least see it, the

vast majority of the men of the modern world have so entered into

the parts they play in their hypocrisy that they boldly deny what is

staring everyone in the face.

"All that is unjust," they say; "no one forces the people to work for

the landowners and manufacturers. That is an affair of free contract.

Great properties and fortunes are necessary, because they provide and

organize work for the working classes. And labor in the factories and

workshops is not at all the terrible thing you make it out to be.

Even if there are some abuses in factories, the government and the

public are taking steps to obviate them and to make the labor of the

factory workers much easier, and even agreeable. The working classes

are accustomed to physical labor, and are, so far, fit for nothing

else. The poverty of the people is not the result of private property

in land, nor of capitalistic oppression, but of other causes: it

is the result of the ignorance, brutality, and intemperance of

the people. And we men in authority who are striving against this

impoverishment of the people by wise legislation, we capitalists who

are combating it by the extension of useful inventions, we clergymen

by religious instruction, and we liberals by the formation of trades

unions, and the diffusion of education, are in this way increasing

the prosperity of the people without changing our own positions.

We do not want all to be as poor as the poor; we want all to be as

rich as the rich. As for the assertion that men are ill treated and

murdered to force them to work for the profit of the rich, that is

a sophism. The army is only called out against the mob, when the

people, in ignorance of their own interests, make disturbances and

destroy the tranquillity necessary for the public welfare. In the

same way, too, it is necessary to keep in restraint the malefactors

for whom the prisons and gallows are established. We ourselves

wish to suppress these forms of punishment and are working in that

direction."

Hypocrisy in our day is supported on two sides: by false religion and

by false science. And it has reached such proportions that if we were

not living in its midst, we could not believe that men could attain

such a pitch of self-deception. Men of the present day have come into

such an extraordinary condition, their hearts are so hardened, that

seeing they see not, hearing they do not hear, and understand not.

Men have long been living in antagonism to their conscience. If it

were not for hypocrisy they could not go on living such a life. This

social organization in opposition to their conscience only continues

to exist because it is disguised by hypocrisy.

And the greater the divergence between actual life and men's

conscience, the greater the extension of hypocrisy. But even

hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems to me that we have reached

those limits in the present day.

Every man of the present day with the Christian principles

assimilated involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in

precisely the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged

to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought not to

do. He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all the same

he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop and cease

doing what he ought not to do. And just as in a dream, his position

becoming more and more painful, at last reaches such a pitch of

intensity that he begins sometimes to doubt the reality of what is

passing and makes a moral effort to shake off the nightmare which is

oppressing him.

This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian

society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done

around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed to

his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and more

unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.

It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of

human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our need

for peaceful association and unity between nations, should really go

on living in such a way that every joy, every gratification we have

is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of our brother men, and

moreover, that we should be every instant within a hair's-breadth

of falling on one another, nation against nation, like wild beasts,

mercilessly destroying men's lives and labor, only because some

benighted diplomatist or ruler says or writes some stupidity to

another equally benighted diplomatist or ruler.

It is impossible. Yet every man of our day sees that this is so

and awaits the calamity. And the situation becomes more and more

insupportable.

And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears to

him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual real

world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the bottom

of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is placed

and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality, and tries to

wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his conscience.

And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask

himself, "Isn't it a dream?" and the situation which seemed to him so

hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to peaceful

and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need only make

a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by his own

hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask himself,

"Isn't it all a delusion?" and he will at once, like the dreamer

awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and dreadful

world to the true, calm, and happy reality.

And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits. He

need only make a moral effort.

But can a man make this effort?

According to the existing theory so essential to support hypocrisy,

man is not free and cannot change his life.

"Man cannot change his life, because he is not free. He is not free,

because all his actions are conditioned by previously existing

causes. And whatever the man may do there are always some causes

or other through which he does these or those acts, and therefore

man cannot be free and change his life," say the champions of the

metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be perfectly right if man

were a creature without conscience and incapable of moving toward

the truth; that is to say, if after recognizing a new truth, man

always remained at the same stage of moral development. But man

is a creature with a conscience and capable of attaining a higher

and higher degree of truth. And therefore even if man is not free

as regards performing these or those acts because there exists a

previous cause for every act, the very causes of his acts, consisting

as they do for the man of conscience of the recognition of this or

that truth, are within his own control.

So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of

his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they are

performed. Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify the

movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to regulate

the machine beforehand so as to determine what the movement is to be.

Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not

otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting is

in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at some

previous time, and is now only through inertia, through habit, acting

in accordance with his previous recognition of truth.

In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any given

previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation to truth,

and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a sufficient

basis for action.

Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or

avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he

considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act

thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this

reflection in the past.

The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not on

external causes, but on certain other causes within the man himself.

So that at times under external conditions apparently very favorable

for the recognition of truth, one man will not recognize it, and

another, on the contrary, under the most unfavorable conditions will,

without apparent cause, recognize it. As it is said in the Gospel,

"No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw

him." That is to say, the recognition of truth, which is the cause

of all the manifestations of human life, does not depend on external

phenomena, but on certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man

which escape our observation.

And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels

himself free in what is the motive of his acts--the recognition or

non-recognition of truth. And he feels himself independent not only

of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own actions.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act

contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to

recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to

recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable,

or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong and censure

himself for it.

Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and

yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and

drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime. In the

first case even if he does not at once get over his passion, he gets

the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the truth

about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his vice and

will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it off.

In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house on

fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains free,

recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of another

even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad and to

censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to regard his

action as natural and necessary and to justify it to himself. In the

first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite of his departure

from it, he prepares for himself in the future a whole series of acts

of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from this recognition of the

truth; in the second case, a whole series of egoistic acts.

Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to recognize

every truth. There are truths which he has recognized long before or

which have been handed down to him by education and tradition and

accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths has become a

habit, a second nature with him; and there are truths, only vaguely,

as it were distantly, apprehended by him. The man is not free to

refuse to recognize the first, nor to recognize the second class of

truths. But there are truths of a third kind, which have not yet

become an unconscious motive of action, but yet have been revealed so

clearly to him that he cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged

to do one thing or the other, to recognize or not to recognize them.

And it is in regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests

itself.

Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the

position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before

him by the lantern he carries. He does not see what is not yet

lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed which

is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey he sees

what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always choose one side

or the other of the road.

There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's

intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived, forgotten,

and assimilated by him, and there are also certain truths that rise

up before the light of his reason and require his recognition. And it

is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that what we

call his freedom is manifested.

All the difficulty and seeming insolubility of the question of the

freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question

imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth.

Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we

forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a

continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of

truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a truth

more purified from them.

Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same way

he would not be free and would not even have any idea of freedom if

the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been revealed once

for all to him in all its purity without any admixture of error.

But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual

man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same

way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree of

truth, and growing more and more free from error.

And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth. Some

truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the

unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of

being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet assimilated

by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient clearness to force

him to decide either to recognize them or to refuse to recognize them.

These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to

refuse to recognize.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting

independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from

it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth

revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful participator in

the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of the world; or on

the other hand for refusing to recognize the truth, and so being a

miserable and reluctant slave dragged whither he has no desire to go.

Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to

move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move. And

therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way of

truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in life,

others submitting involuntarily to the law of life. Man's freedom

lies in the power of this choice.

This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to men

that they do not notice it. Some--the determinists--consider this

amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it at all.

Others--the champions of complete free will--keep their eyes fixed on

their hypothetical free will and neglect this which seemed to them

such a trivial degree of freedom.

This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance

of the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems

hardly freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing

or unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be

inevitably forced to carry it out in life.

A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from

moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him

down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the

horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And

so it is with man.

Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with

the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom

that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable

by man.

And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of accomplishing

the divine work of the life of the world.

According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance of

life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of effects,

that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to the Christian

doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has transported his

life to the domain in which it is free--the domain of causes, that

is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession and realization in

life of revealed truth.

Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with

actions depending on temporary causes outside himself. He himself

does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something. In

reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher

power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of

it. Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the truth

revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of universal

life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent on conditions

of space and time, but acts unconditioned by previous causes, acts

which constitute the causes of everything else, and have an infinite,

unlimited significance.

"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by

force." (Matt. xi. 12.)

It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the

recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of heaven

is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and can be

made in our times.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble

themselves about the general external conditions in which they are

not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste

on those material things to that in which they are free, to the

recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and to

the liberation of themselves and others from deception and hypocrisy,

and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end at once of the

false organization of life which makes men miserable, and threatens

them with worse calamities in the future. And then the kingdom of

God would be realized, or at least that first stage of it for which

men are ready now by the degree of development of their conscience.

Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is saturated

with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a slight

effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth already

revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds, thousands, millions

of men, that a public opinion consistent with conscience may be

established, and through this change of public opinion the whole

order of life may be transformed. And it depends upon us to make this

effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian truth

which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and forces

itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending that we

do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in what it

demands from us above all else; only let us accept and boldly profess

the truth to which we are called, and we should find at once that

hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the same position as

we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread as we do to stand

alone in recognizing it, and like us are only waiting for others to

recognize it also.

Only let men cease to be hypocrites, and they would at once see that

this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage, and is

represented to them as something stable, necessary, and ordained of

God, is already tottering and is only propped up by the falsehood of

hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us, support it.

But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break down

the existing organization of life, have we the right to destroy it,

without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its place? What will

become of human society when the existing order of things is at an

end?

"What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we are

abandoning?

"Fear will come upon us--a void, a vast emptiness, freedom--how are

we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not seeing

hope of gain?... If Columbus had reasoned thus he would never have

weighed anchor. It was madness to set off upon the ocean, not knowing

the route, on the ocean on which no one had sailed, to sail toward

a land whose existence was doubtful. By this madness he discovered

a new world. Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply

transfer themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better

one--it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no one to

get humanity's new dwelling ready for it. The future is even worse

than the ocean--there is nothing there--it will be what men and

circumstances make it.

"If you are content with the old world, try to preserve it, it is

very sick and cannot hold out much longer. But if you cannot bear to

live in everlasting dissonance between your beliefs and your life,

thinking one thing and doing another, get out of the mediæval whited

sepulchers, and face your fears. I know very well it is not easy.

"It is not a little thing to cut one's self off from all to which a

man has been accustomed from his birth, with which he has grown up

to maturity. Men are ready for tremendous sacrifices, but not for

those which life demands of them. Are they ready to sacrifice modern

civilization, their manner of life, their religion, the received

conventional morality?

"Are we ready to give up all the results we have attained with such

effort, results of which we have been boasting for three centuries;

to give up every convenience and charm of our existence, to prefer

savage youth to the senile decay of civilization, to pull down the

palace raised for us by our ancestors only for the pleasure of having

a hand in the founding of a new house, which will doubtless be built

long after we are gone?" (Herzen, vol. v. p. 55.)

Thus wrote almost half a century ago the Russian writer, who with

prophetic insight saw clearly then, what even the most unreflecting

man sees to-day, the impossibility, that is, of life continuing on

its old basis, and the necessity of establishing new forms of life.

It is clear now from the very simplest, most commonplace point of

view, that it is madness to remain under the roof of a building which

cannot support its weight, and that we must leave it. And indeed it

is difficult to imagine a position more wretched than that of the

Christian world to-day, with its nations armed against one another,

with its constantly increasing taxation to maintain its armies,

with the hatred of the working class for the rich ever growing more

intense, with the Damocles sword of war forever hanging over the

heads of all, ready every instant to fall, certain to fall sooner or

later.

Hardly could any revolution be more disastrous for the great mass

of the population than the present order or rather disorder of our

life, with its daily sacrifices to exhausting and unnatural toil, to

poverty, drunkenness, and profligacy, with all the horrors of the war

that is at hand, which will swallow up in one year more victims than

all the revolutions of the century.

What will become of humanity if each of us performs the duty God

demands of us through the conscience implanted within us? Will not

harm come if, being wholly in the power of a master, I carry out, in

the workshop erected and directed by him, the orders he gives me,

strange though they may seem to me who do not know the Master's final

aims?

But it is not even this question "What will happen?" that agitates

men when they hesitate to fulfill the Master's will. They are

troubled by the question how to live without those habitual

conditions of life which we call civilization, culture, art, and

science. We feel ourselves all the burdensomeness of life as it is;

we see also that this organization of life must inevitably be our

ruin, if it continues. At the same time we want the conditions of our

life which arise out of this organization--our civilization, culture,

art, and science--to remain intact. It is as though a man, living in

an old house and suffering from cold and all sorts of inconvenience

in it, knowing, too, that it is on the point of falling to pieces,

should consent to its being rebuilt, but only on the condition

that he should not be required to leave it: a condition which is

equivalent to refusing to have it rebuilt at all.

"But what if I leave the house and give up every convenience for a

time, and the new house is not built, or is built on a different plan

so that I do not find in it the comforts to which I am accustomed?"

But seeing that the materials and the builders are here, there is

every likelihood that the new house will on the contrary be better

built than the old one. And at the same time, there is not only the

likelihood but the certainty that the old house will fall down and

crush those who remain within it. Whether the old habitual conditions

of life are supported, or whether they are abolished and altogether

new and better conditions arise; in any case, there is no doubt we

shall be forced to leave the old forms of life which have become

impossible and fatal, and must go forward to meet the future.

"Civilization, art, science, culture, will disappear!"

Yes, but all these we know are only various manifestations of truth,

and the change that is before us is only to be made for the sake

of a closer attainment and realization of truth. How then can the

manifestations of truth disappear through our realizing it? These

manifestations will be different, higher, better, but they will not

cease to be. Only what is false in them will be destroyed; all the

truth there was in them will only be stronger and more flourishing.

Take thought, oh, men, and have faith in the Gospel, in whose

teaching is your happiness. If you do not take thought, you will

perish just as the men perished, slain by Pilate, or crushed by the

tower of Siloam; as millions of men have perished, slayers and slain,

executing and executed, torturers and tortured alike, and as the man

foolishly perished, who filled his granaries full and made ready

for a long life and died the very night that he planned to begin

his life. Take thought and have faith in the Gospel, Christ said

eighteen hundred years ago, and he says it with even greater force

now that the calamities foretold by him have come to pass, and the

senselessness of our life has reached the furthest point of suffering

and madness.

Nowadays, after so many centuries of fruitless efforts to make our

life secure by the pagan organization of life, it must be evident

to everyone that all efforts in that direction only introduce fresh

dangers into personal and social life, and do not render it more

secure in any way.

Whatever names we dignify ourselves with, whatever uniforms we wear,

whatever priests we anoint ourselves before, however many millions we

possess, however many guards are stationed along our road, however

many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called criminals,

revolutionists, and anarchists we punish, whatever exploits we have

performed, whatever states we may have founded, fortresses and

towers we may have erected--from Babel to the Eiffel Tower--there

are two inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which

destroy its whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce

upon each of us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, which

so soon pass away and leave no trace. Whatever we may do--found

companies, build palaces and monuments, write songs and poems--it is

all not for long time. Soon it passes away, leaving no trace. And

therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help

seeing that the significance of our life cannot lie in our personal

fleshly existence, the prey of incurable suffering and inevitable

death, nor in any social institution or organization. Whoever you may

be who are reading these lines, think of your position and of your

duties--not of your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor,

president, minister, priest, soldier, which has been temporarily

allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary duties laid on you by

those positions, but of your real positions in eternity as a creature

who at the will of Someone has been called out of unconsciousness

after an eternity of non-existence to which you may return at any

moment at his will. Think of your duties--not your supposed duties

as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your business, as

emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your real duties,

the duties that follow from your real position as a being called into

life and endowed with reason and love.

Are you doing what he demands of you who has sent you into the world,

and to whom you will soon return? Are you doing what he wills? Are

you doing his will, when as landowner or manufacturer you rob the

poor of the fruits of their toil, basing your life on this plunder

of the workers, or when, as judge or governor, you ill treat men,

sentence them to execution, or when as soldiers you prepare for war,

kill and plunder?

You will say that the world is so made that this is inevitable, and

that you do not do this of your own free will, but because you are

forced to do so. But can it be that you have such a strong aversion

to men's sufferings, ill treatment, and murder, that you have such

an intense need of love and co-operation with your fellows that you

see clearly that only by the recognition of the equality of all, and

by mutual services, can the greatest possible happiness be realized;

that your head and your heart, the faith you profess, and even

science itself tell you the same thing, and yet that in spite of it

all you can be forced by some confused and complicated reasoning to

act in direct opposition to all this; that as landowner or capitalist

you are bound to base your whole life on the oppression of the

people; that as emperor or president you are to command armies, that

is, to be the head and commander of murderers; or that as government

official you are forced to take from the poor their last pence for

rich men to profit and share them among themselves; or that as

judge or juryman you could be forced to sentence erring men to ill

treatment and death because the truth was not revealed to them, or

above all, for that is the basis of all the evil, that you could be

forced to become a soldier, and renouncing your free will and your

human sentiments, could undertake to kill anyone at the command of

other men?

It cannot be.

Even if you are told that all this is necessary for the maintenance

of the existing order of things, and that this social order with

its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is

necessary to society; that still greater disasters would ensue if

this organization were destroyed; all that is said only by those who

profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it--and they

are ten times as numerous--think and say quite the contrary. And at

the bottom of your heart you know yourself that it is not true, that

the existing organization has outlived its time, and must inevitably

be reconstructed on new principles, and that consequently there is

no obligation upon you to sacrifice your sentiments of humanity to

support it.

Above all, even if you allow that this organization is necessary,

why do you believe it to be your duty to maintain it at the cost of

your best feelings? Who has made you the nurse in charge of this sick

and moribund organization? Not society nor the state nor anyone;

no one has asked you to undertake this; you who fill your position

of landowner, merchant, tzar, priest, or soldier know very well

that you occupy that position by no means with the unselfish aim of

maintaining the organization of life necessary to men's happiness,

but simply in your own interests, to satisfy your own covetousness or

vanity or ambition or indolence or cowardice. If you did not desire

that position, you would not be doing your utmost to retain it. Try

the experiment of ceasing to commit the cruel, treacherous, and base

actions that you are constantly committing in order to retain your

position, and you will lose it at once. Try the simple experiment,

as a government official, of giving up lying, and refusing to take

a part in executions and acts of violence; as a priest, of giving

up deception; as a soldier, of giving up murder; as landowner or

manufacturer, of giving up defending your property by fraud and

force; and you will at once lose the position which you pretend is

forced upon you, and which seems burdensome to you.

A man cannot be placed against his will in a situation opposed to his

conscience.

If you find yourself in such a position it is not because it is

necessary to anyone whatever, but simply because you wish it. And

therefore knowing that your position is repugnant to your heart and

your head, and to your faith, and even to the science in which you

believe, you cannot help reflecting upon the question whether in

retaining it, and above all trying to justify it, you are doing what

you ought to do.

You might risk making a mistake if you had time to see and retrieve

your fault, and if you ran the risk for something of some value. But

when you know beyond all doubt that you may disappear any minute,

without the least possibility either for yourself or those you draw

after you into your error, of retrieving the mistake, when you know

that whatever you may do in the external organization of life it will

all disappear as quickly and surely as you will yourself, and will

leave no trace behind, it is clear that you have no reasonable ground

for running the risk of such a fearful mistake.

It would be perfectly simple and clear if you did not by your

hypocrisy disguise the truth which has so unmistakably been revealed

to us.

Share all that you have with others, do not heap up riches, do not

steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill, do not unto others what

you would not they should do unto you, all that has been said not

eighteen hundred, but five thousand years ago, and there could be no

doubt of the truth of this law if it were not for hypocrisy. Except

for hypocrisy men could not have failed, if not to put the law in

practice, at least to recognize it, and admit that it is wrong not to

put it in practice.

But you will say that there is the public good to be considered, and

that on that account one must not and ought not to conform to these

principles; for the public good one may commit acts of violence and

murder. It is better for one man to die than that the whole people

perish, you will say like Caiaphas, and you sign the sentence of

death of one man, of a second, and a third; you load your gun against

this man who is to perish for the public good, you imprison him, you

take his possessions. You say that you commit these acts of cruelty

because you are a part of the society and of the state; that it is

your duty to serve them, and as landowner, judge, emperor, or soldier

to conform to their laws. But besides belonging to the state and

having duties created by that position, you belong also to eternity

and to God, who also lays duties upon you. And just as your duties

to your family and to society are subordinate to your superior

duties to the state, in the same way the latter must necessarily be

subordinated to the duties dictated to you by the eternal life and by

God. And just as it would be senseless to pull up the telegraph posts

for fuel for a family or society and thus to increase its welfare at

the expense of public interests, in the same way it is senseless to

do violence, to execute, and to murder to increase the welfare of the

nation, because that is at the expense of the interests of humanity.

Your duties as a citizen cannot but be subordinated to the superior

obligations of the eternal life of God, and cannot be in opposition

to them. As Christ's disciples said eighteen centuries ago: "Whether

it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto

God, judge ye" (Acts iv. 19); and, "We ought to obey God rather than

men" (Acts v. 29).

It is asserted that, in order that the unstable order of things,

established in one corner of the world for a few men, may not be

destroyed, you ought to commit acts of violence which destroy the

eternal and immutable order established by God and by reason. Can

that possibly be?

And therefore you cannot but reflect on your position as landowner,

manufacturer, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, and

soldier, which is bound up with violence, deception, and murder, and

recognize its unlawfulness.

I do not say that if you are a landowner you are bound to give up

your lands immediately to the poor; if a capitalist or manufacturer,

your money to your workpeople; or that if you are Tzar, minister,

official, judge, or general, you are bound to renounce immediately

the advantages of your position; or if a soldier, on whom all the

system of violence is based, to refuse immediately to obey in spite

of all the dangers of insubordination.

If you do so, you will be doing the best thing possible. But it may

happen, and it is most likely, that you will not have the strength

to do so. You have relations, a family, subordinates and superiors;

you are under an influence so powerful that you cannot shake it off;

but you can always recognize the truth and refuse to tell a lie

about it. You need not declare that you are remaining a landowner,

manufacturer, merchant, artist, or writer because it is useful to

mankind; that you are governor, prosecutor, or tzar, not because

it is agreeable to you, because you are used to it, but for the

public good; that you continue to be a soldier, not from fear of

punishment, but because you consider the army necessary to society.

You can always avoid lying in this way to yourself and to others, and

you ought to do so; because the one aim of your life ought to be to

purify yourself from falsehood and to confess the truth. And you need

only do that and your situation will change directly of itself.

There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to

you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to

recognize and profess the truth.

And yet simply from the fact that other men as misguided and as

pitiful creatures as yourself have made you soldier, tzar, landowner,

capitalist, priest, or general, you undertake to commit acts of

violence obviously opposed to your reason and your heart, to base

your existence on the misfortunes of others, and above all, instead

of filling the one duty of your life, recognizing and professing the

truth, you feign not to recognize it and disguise it from yourself

and others.

And what are the conditions in which you are doing this? You who

may die any instant, you sign sentences of death, you declare war,

you take part in it, you judge, you punish, you plunder the working

people, you live luxuriously in the midst of the poor, and teach weak

men who have confidence in you that this must be so, that the duty of

men is to do this, and yet it may happen at the moment when you are

acting thus that a bacterium or a bull may attack you and you will

fall and die, losing forever the chance of repairing the harm you

have done to others, and above all to yourself, in uselessly wasting

a life which has been given you only once in eternity, without

having accomplished the only thing you ought to have done.

However commonplace and out of date it may seem to us, however

confused we may be by hypocrisy and by the hypnotic suggestion which

results from it, nothing can destroy the certainty of this simple

and clearly defined truth. No external conditions can guarantee our

life, which is attended with inevitable sufferings and infallibly

terminated by death, and which consequently can have no significance

except in the constant accomplishment of what is demanded by the

Power which has placed us in life with a sole certain guide--the

rational conscience.

That is why that Power cannot require of us what is irrational and

impossible: the organization of our temporary external life, the life

of society or of the state. That Power demands of us only what is

reasonable, certain, and possible: to serve the kingdom of God, that

is, to contribute to the establishment of the greatest possible union

between all living beings--a union possible only in the truth; and to

recognize and to profess the revealed truth, which is always in our

power.

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all

these things shall be added unto you." (Matt. vi. 33.)

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the

establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the

recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

"The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall they

say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within

you." (Luke xvii. 20, 21.)

THE END.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

Text enclosed by plus signs (+Greek+) is a transileration of Greek.

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been

retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.

The transcriber has changed the page number for Chapter XII in the

Table of Contents from 279 to 278.