3. The oath impels men to sin. Know that it is wrong, and bind not
yourselves by any promise.
4. Human vengeance or justice is an evil. Do not, under any pretext,
practise it. Bear with insults, and render not evil for evil.
5. Know that all men are brothers, the sons of one father. Do not break
the peace with any on account of difference of nationality.
By putting this doctrine into practice, man can realize a happiness
in life, and there is no happiness in life except in this path. There
is no immortality. The conception of the resurrection of the dead,
according to Tolstoï, is the greatest piece of barbarism.
The political doctrine derived from this religious doctrine admits of
no tribunals or armies or national frontiers.
The social doctrine to which we must be led by this religious and
political dogma is the suppression of property, and the proclamation of
communism. Man is not put into the world that others should work for
him, but that he himself should work for others. He alone who works
shall have daily bread.
The most dangerous enemy of society is the Church, because it supports
with all its power the errors which it has read into its interpretation
of Jesus’ doctrine. In place of this false light of Church dogma, which
misleads believers and lets them “go into the pit,” must be substituted
the light of conscience; one’s whole conduct must be irradiated by it,
by submitting each of his acts to the approbation of the judge which we
feel within us, “in our inner tribunal.”
To succeed in leading the life which conscience may approve, what is,
above all, necessary? “Do not lead a life which makes it so difficult
to refrain from wrath, from not committing adultery, from not taking
oaths, from not defending yourself by violence, from not carrying on
war: lead a life which would make all that difficult to do.” Do not
crush at pleasure the very conditions of earthly happiness; do not
break the bond which unites man to nature: that is to say, lead lives
so as to enjoy “the sky, the sun, the pure air, the earth covered with
vegetation and peopled with animals;” become a rustic instead of being
the busy, weary, sickly urban. Return to the natural law of labor,--of
labor freely chosen and accomplished with pleasure, of physical labor,
the source of appetite and sleep. Have a family, but have the joys
of it as well as the cares: that is, keep your children near you; do
not intrust their education to strangers; do not imprison them; do
not drive them “into physical, moral, and intellectual corruption.”
Have free and affectionate intercourse with all men, whatever their
rank, their nationality. “The peasant and wife are free to enter into
brotherly relations with eighty millions of working-men, from Arkhangel
to Astrakhan, without waiting for ceremony or introduction. A clerk and
his wife find hundreds of people who are their equals; but the clerks
of higher station do not recognize them as their equals, and they
in their turn exclude their inferiors. A wealthy man of society and
his wife have only a few score families of equal distinction, all the
others are unknown to them. The cabinet minister and the millionaire
have only a dozen people as rich and as important as they are. For
emperors and kings, the circle is still narrower. Is it not like a
prison, where each prisoner in his cell has relations only with one or
two jailers?” Finally, live in a community, in hygienic conditions,
with moral habits, which bring you the nearest possible to that ideal
which is the very foundation of happiness, health as long as you live,
death without disease, when existence has reached its limit.
The higher one rises in the social scale, the farther one departs from
this ideal. The picture, which Tolstoï paints of the physical pains and
tortures of the wealthy and of the aristocratic, of those whom he calls
“the martyrs of the religion of the world,” is remarkably vigorous.
Rousseau’s declamation against the pretended benefits of civilization
here finds a powerful interpreter.
Does that mean that Tolstoï declaims? No one is more in earnest. It is
not only in words that he declares war on the organization of society
recognized and defended by the government of his country. He puts the
doctrine into practice; he is ready to suffer all things to affirm
the cause of Jesus. His refusal to take an oath, which is one of the
articles of his creed, has already brought upon him a condemnation
from one of those tribunals which he himself condemns in the name
of the maxim of the Gospels, “Judge not.” It is not credible that
the old hero of the wars of the Caucasus and Crimea compels his son
to refuse military service, as was done once by the son of Sutaïef,
the _raskolnik_ of Tver. He would have liked to strip himself of his
property, in order to conform to the socialistic dogma forbidding
inheritance and property. He was hindered only by the fear of trampling
upon the liberty and the conscience of others. But amid the luxury of
his family Count Tolstoï lives the life of a poor man. He has dropped
his pen as a novelist.[57] Clad like a _muzhik_, he wields the scythe
or drives the plough; between seedtime and harvest, he preaches his
evangel.
I do not wish either to spread or to confute his teaching: for me it
is sufficient to have given the reader an idea of it. Let him not show
the characteristic behavior of a French reader; let him not hasten
to see in Count Tolstoï’s latest attitude a sign of aberration. This
attitude in his country is shared by a multitude of men. The single
religious sect of _Shalaputui_ (Extravagants), preaching and practising
a communistic gospel like Tolstoï, has, within a score of years, won
over all the common people, all the rustic class, of the south and
south-west of Russia. Judicious observers, well-informed economists,
foresee the complete and immediate spread of the doctrine in the lower
classes throughout the empire.[58] The day when the work of propagation
shall be finished, the _raskolniks_ of a special socialistic dogma will
be counted: their number will suffice to show their power. That day,
if they take it into their heads to act, will only have--using the
popular expression--“to blow” on the old order of things, to see it
vanish away.