DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE MUST INEVITABLY BE
ACCEPTED BY MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY.
Christianity is Not a System of Rules, but a New Conception of
Life, and therefore it was Not Obligatory and was Not Accepted
in its True Significance by All, but only by a Few--Christianity
is, Moreover, Prophetic of the Destruction of the Pagan Life,
and therefore of Necessity of the Acceptance of the Christian
Doctrines--Non-resistance of Evil by Force is One Aspect of the
Christian Doctrine, which must Inevitably in Our Times be
Accepted by Men--Two Methods of Deciding Every Quarrel--First
Method is to Find a Universal Definition of Evil, which All Must
Accept, and to Resist this Evil by Force--Second Method is the
Christian One of Complete Non-resistance by Force--Though the
Failure of the First Method was Recognized since the Early Days of
Christianity, it was Still Proposed, and only as Mankind has
Progressed it has Become More and More Evident that there Cannot
be any Universal Definition of Evil--This is Recognized by All at
the Present Day, and if Force is Still Used to Resist Evil, it is
Not Because it is Now Regarded as Right, but Because People Don't
Know How to Avoid It--The Difficulty of Avoiding It is the Result
of the Subtle and Complex Character of the Government Use of
Force--Force is Used in Four Ways: Intimidation, Bribery,
Hypnotism, and Coercion by Force of Arms--State Violence Can Never
be Suppressed by the Forcible Overthrow of the Government--Men are
Led by the Sufferings of the Pagan Mode of Life to the Necessity
of Accepting Christ's Teaching with its Doctrine of Non-resistance
by Force--The Consciousness of its Truth which is Diffused
Throughout Our Society, Will also Bring About its Acceptance--This
Consciousness is in Complete Contradiction with Our Life--This is
Specially Obvious in Compulsory Military Service, but Through
Habit and the Application of the Four Methods of Violence by the
State, Men do not See this Inconsistency of Christianity with Life
of a Soldier--They do Not even See It, though the Authorities
Themselves Show all the Immorality of a Soldier's Duties with
Perfect Clearness--The Call to Military Service is the Supreme
Test for Every Man, when the Choice is Offered Him, between
Adopting the Christian Doctrine of Non-resistance, or Slavishly
Submitting to the Existing State Organization--Men Usually
Renounce All They Hold Sacred, and Submit to the Demands of
Government, Seeming to See No Other Course Open to Them--For Men
of the Pagan Conception of Life there is No Other Course Open, and
Never Will Be, in Spite of the Growing Horrors of War--Society,
Made Up of Such Men, Must Perish, and No Social Reorganization Can
Save It--Pagan Life Has Reached Its Extreme Limit, and Will
Annihilate Itself.
It is often said that if Christianity is a truth, it ought to have
been accepted by everyone directly it appeared, and ought to have
transformed men's lives for the better. But this is like saying
that if the seed were ripe it ought at once to bring forth stalls,
flower, and fruit.
The Christian religion is not a legal system which, being imposed
by violence, may transform men's lives. Christianity is a new and
higher conception of life. A new conception of life cannot be
imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can
only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and
internal, the other experimental and external.
Some people--a minority--by a kind of prophetic instinct divine
the truth of the doctrine, surrender themselves to it and adopt
it. Others--the majority--only through a long course of mistakes,
experiments, and suffering are brought to recognize the truth of
the doctrine and the necessity of adopting it.
And by this experimental external method the majority of Christian
men have now been brought to this necessity of assimilating the
doctrine. One sometimes wonders what necessitated the corruption
of Christianity which is now the greatest obstacle to its
acceptance in its true significance.
If Christianity had been presented to men in its true, uncorrupted
form, it would not have been accepted by the majority, who would
have been as untouched by it as the nations of Asia are now. The
peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its
slow but certain influence, and by a long course of errors and
experiments and their resultant sufferings have now been brought
to the necessity of assimilating it in its true significance.
The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupt
form by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the
seed should remain hidden for a certain time in the earth in order
to germinate.
Christianity is at once a doctrine of truth and a prophecy.
Eighteen centuries ago Christianity revealed to men the truth in
which they ought to live, and at the same time foretold what human
life would become if men would not live by it but continued to
live by their previous principles, and what it would become if
they accepted the Christian doctrine and carried it out in their
lives.
Laying down in the Sermon on the Mount the principles by which to
guide men's lives, Christ said: "Whosoever heareth these sayings
of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who
built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it
fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that
heareth these sayings, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon
that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it" (Matt. vii.
24-27).
And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled.
Not having followed Christ's teaching generally and its
application to social life in non-resistance to evil, men have
been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction
foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfill his teaching.
People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force
is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question
is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer
from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been
outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life
like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the
road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but
will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there
are two, and he must make his choice.
In the same way since Christ's teaching has been known by men they
cannot say: I will live as before and will not decide the question
of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. At every new
struggle that arises one must inevitably decide; am I, or am I
not, to resist by force what I regard as evil.
The question of resistance or non-resistance to evil arose when
the first conflict between men took place, since every conflict is
nothing else than resistance by force to what each of the
combatants regards as evil. But before Christ, men did not see
that resistance by force to what each regards as evil, simply
because one thinks evil what the other thinks good, is only one of
the methods of settling the dispute, and that there is another
method, that of not resisting evil by force at all.
Before Christ's teaching, it seemed to men that the one only means
of settling a dispute was by resistance to evil by force. And
they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convince
himself and others that what each respectively regards as evil, is
actually, absolutely evil.
And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions
of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone. And such
definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to
have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the
commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was
attributed. Men resorted to violence against others, and
convinced themselves and others that they were directing their
violence against evil recognized as such by all.
This means was employed from the earliest times, especially by
those who had gained possession of authority, and for a long while
its irrationality was not detected.
But the longer men lived in the world and the more complex their
relations became, the more evident it was that to resist by force
what each regarded as evil was irrational, that conflict was in no
way lessened thereby, and that no human definitions can succeed in
making what some regard as evil be accepted as such by others.
Already at the time Christianity arose, it was evident to a great
number of people in the Roman Empire where it arose, that what was
regarded as evil by Nero and Caligula could not be regarded as
evil by others. Even at that time men had begun to understand
that human laws, though given out for divine laws, were compiled
by men, and cannot be infallible, whatever the external majesty
with which they are invested, and that erring men are not rendered
infallible by assembling together and calling themselves a senate
or any other name. Even at that time this was felt and understood
by many. And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which
consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by
force, but gave a new conception of life and a means of putting an
end to conflict between all men, not by making it the duty of one
section only of mankind to submit without conflict to what is
prescribed to them by certain authorities, but by making it the
duty of all--and consequently of those in authority--not to resort
to force against anyone in any circumstances.
This doctrine was accepted at the time by only a very small number
of disciples. The majority of men, especially all who were in
power, even after the nominal acceptance of Christianity,
continued to maintain for themselves the principle of resistance
by force to what they regarded as evil. So it was under the Roman
and Byzantine emperors, and so it continued to be later.
The insufficiency of the principle of the authoritative definition
of evil and resistance to it by force, evident as it was in the
early ages of Christianity, becomes still more obvious through the
division of the Roman Empire into many states of equal authority,
through their hostilities and the internal conflicts that broke
out within them.
But men were not ready to accept the solution given by Christ, and
the old definitions of evil, which ought to be resisted, continued
to be laid down by means of making laws binding on all and
enforced by forcible means. The authority who decided what ought
to be regarded as evil and resisted by force was at one time the
Pope, at another an emperor or king, an elective assembly or a
whole nation. But both within and without the state there were
always men to be found who did not accept as binding on themselves
the laws given out as the decrees of a god, or made by men
invested with a sacred character, or the institutions supposed to
represent the will of the nation; and there were men who thought
good what the existing authorities regarded as bad, and who
struggled against the authorities with the same violence as was
employed against them.
The men invested with religious authority regarded as evil what
the men and institutions invested with temporal authority regarded
as good and vice versa, and the struggle grew more and more
intense. And the longer men used violence as the means of
settling their disputes, the more obvious it became that it was an
unsuitable means, since there could be no external authority able
to define evil recognized by all.
Things went on like this for eighteen centuries, and at last
reached the present position in which it is absolutely obvious
that there is, and can be, no external definition of evil binding
upon all. Men have come to the point of ceasing to believe in the
possibility or even desirability of finding and establishing such
a general definition. It has come to men in power ceasing to
attempt to prove that what they regard as evil is evil, and simply
declaring that they regard as evil what they don't like, while
their subjects no longer obey them because they accept the
definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they
cannot help themselves. It was not because it was a good thing,
necessary and beneficial to men, and the contrary course would
have been an evil, but simply because it was the will of those in
power that Nice was incorporated into France, and Lorraine into
Germany, and Bohemia into Austria, and that Poland was divided,
and Ireland and India ruled by the English government, and that
the Chinese are attacked and the Africans slaughtered, and the
Chinese prevented from immigrating by the Americans, and the Jews
persecuted by the Russians, and that landowners appropriate lands
they do not cultivate and capitalists enjoy the fruits of the
labor of others. It has come to the present state of things; one
set of men commit acts of violence no longer on the pretext of
resistance to evil, but simply for their profit or their caprice,
and another set submit to violence, not because they suppose, as
was supposed in former times, that this violence was practised
upon them for the sake of securing them from evil, but simply
because they cannot avoid it.
If the Roman, or the man of mediaeval times, or the average
Russian of fifty years ago, as I remember him, was convinced
without a shade of doubt that the violence of authority was
indispensable to preserve him from evil; that taxes, dues,
serfage, prisons, scourging, knouts, executions, the army and war
were what ought to be--we know now that one can seldom find a man
who believes that all these means of violence preserve anyone from
any evil whatever, and indeed does not clearly perceive that most
of these acts of violence to which he is exposed, and in which he
has some share, are in themselves a great and useless evil.
There is no one to-day who does not see the uselessness and injustice of
collecting taxes from the toiling masses to enrich idle officials; or
the senselessness of inflicting punishments on weak or depraved persons
in the shape of transportation from one place to another, or of
imprisonment in a fortress where, living in security and indolence, they
only become weaker and more depraved; or the worse than uselessness and
injustice, the positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war
and of wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of
justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are supported by
the very people who see their uselessness, injustice, and cruelty, and
suffer from them. If fifty years ago the idle rich man and the
illiterate laborer were both alike convinced that their state of
everlasting holiday for one and everlasting toil for the other was
ordained by God himself, we know very well that nowadays, thanks to the
growth of population and the diffusion of books and education, it would
be hard to find in Europe or even in Russia, either among rich or poor,
a man to whom in one shape or another a doubt as to the justice of this
state of things had never presented itself. The rich know that they are
guilty in the very fact of being rich, and try to expiate their guilt by
sacrifices to art and science, as of old they expiated their sins by
sacrifices to the Church. And even the larger half of the working people
openly declare that the existing order is iniquitous and bound to be
destroyed or reformed. One set of religious people of whom there are
millions in Russia, the so-called sectaries, consider the existing
social order as unjust and to be destroyed on the ground of the Gospel
teaching taken in its true sense. Others regard it as unjust on the
ground of the socialistic, communistic, or anarchistic theories, which
are springing up in the lower strata of the working people. Violence no
longer rests on the belief in its utility, but only on the fact of its
having existed so long, and being organized by the ruling classes who
profit by it, so that those who are under their authority cannot
extricate themselves from it. The governments of our day--all of them,
the most despotic and the liberal alike--have become what Herzen so well
called "Ghenghis Khan with the telegraph;" that is to say, organizations
of violence based on no principle but the grossest tyranny, and at the
same time taking advantage of all the means invented by science for the
peaceful collective social activity of free and equal men, used by them
to enslave and oppress their fellows.
Governments and the ruling classes no longer take their stand on
right or even on the semblance of justice, but on a skillful
organization carried to such a point of perfection by the aid of
science that everyone is caught in the circle of violence and has
no chance of escaping from it. This circle is made up now of four
methods of working upon men, joined together like the limes of a
chain ring.
The first and oldest method is intimidation. This consists in
representing the existing state organization--whatever it may be,
free republic or the most savage despotism--as something sacred
and immutable, and therefore following any efforts to alter it
with the cruellest punishments. This method is in use now--as it
has been from olden times--wherever there is a government: in
Russia against the so-called Nihilists, in America against
Anarchists, in France against Imperialists, Legitimists,
Communards, and Anarchists.
Railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs, and the great
perfection of the means of getting rid of men for years, without
killing them, by solitary confinement, where, hidden from the
world, they perish and are forgotten, and the many other modern
inventions employed by government, give such power that when once
authority has come into certain hands, the police, open and
secret, the administration and prosecutors, jailers and
executioners of all kinds, do their work so zealously that there
is no chance of overturning the government, however cruel and
senseless it may be.
The second method is corruption. It consists in plundering the
industrious working people of their wealth by means of taxes and
distributing it in satisfying the greed of officials, who are
bound in return to support and keep up the oppression of the
people. These bought officials, from the highest ministers to the
poorest copying clerks, make up an unbroken network of men bound
together by the same interest--that of living at the expense of
the people. They become the richer the more submissively they
carry out the will of the government; and at all times and places,
sticking at nothing, in all departments support by word and deed
the violence of government, on which their own prosperity also
rests.
The third method is what I can only describe as hypnotizing the
people. This consists in checking the moral development of men,
and by various suggestions keeping them back in the ideal of life,
outgrown by mankind at large, on which the power of government
rests. This hypnotizing process is organized at the present in the
most complex manner, and starting from their earliest childhood,
continues to act on men till the day of their death. It begins in
their earliest years in the compulsory schools, created for this
purpose, in which the children have instilled into them the ideas
of life of their ancestors, which are in direct antagonism with
the conscience of the modern world. In countries where there is a
state religion, they teach the children the senseless blasphemies
of the Church catechisms, together with the duty of obedience to
their superiors. In republican states they teach them the savage
superstition of patriotism and the same pretended obedience to the
governing authorities.
The process is kept up during later years by the encouragement of
religious and patriotic superstitions.
The religious superstition is encouraged by establishing, with
money taken from the people, temples, processions, memorials, and
festivals, which, aided by painting, architecture, music, and
incense, intoxicate the people, and above all by the support of
the clergy, whose duty consists in brutalizing the people and
keeping them in a permanent state of stupefaction by their
teaching, the solemnity of their services, their sermons, and
their interference in private life--at births, deaths, and
marriages. The patriotic superstition is encouraged by the
creation, with money taken from the people, of national fêtes,
spectacles, monuments, and festivals to dispose men to attach
importance to their own nation, and to the aggrandizement of the
state and its rulers, and to feel antagonism and even hatred for
other nations. With these objects under despotic governments there
is direct prohibition against printing and disseminating books to
enlighten the people, and everyone who might rouse the people from
their lethargy is exiled or imprisoned. Moreover, under every
government without exception everything is kept back that might
emancipate and everything encouraged that tends to corrupt the
people, such as literary works tending to keep them in the
barbarism of religious and patriotic superstition, all kinds of
sensual amusements, spectacles, circuses, theaters, and even the
physical means of inducing stupefaction, as tobacco and alcohol,
which form the principal source of revenue of states. Even
prostitution is encouraged, and not only recognized, but even
organized by the government in the majority of states. So much for
the third method.
The fourth method consists in selecting from all the men who have
been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain
number, exposing them to special and intensified means of
stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive
instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities
needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them
at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and
definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural
and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful
labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special
clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining
objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this
purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition
in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines,
submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men
(in these days of universal conscription, all young men),
hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the
governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their
command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving
men.
By this method the circle of violence is completed.
Intimidation, corruption, and hypnotizing bring people into a
condition in which they are willing to be soldiers; the soldiers
give the power of punishing and plundering them (and purchasing
officials with the spoils), and hypnotizing them and converting
them in time into these same soldiers again.
The circle is complete, and there is no chance of breaking through
it by force.
Some persons maintain that freedom from violence, or at least a
great diminution of it, may be gained by the oppressed forcibly
overturning the oppressive government and replacing it by a new
one under which such violence and oppression will be unnecessary,
but they deceive themselves and others, and their efforts do not
better the position of the oppressed, but only make it worse.
Their conduct only tends to increase the despotism of government.
Their efforts only afford a plausible pretext for government to
strengthen their power.
Even if we admit that under a combination of circumstances
specially unfavorable for the government, as in France in 1870,
any government might be forcibly overturned and the power
transferred to other hands, the new authority would rarely be less
oppressive than the old one; on the contrary, always having to
defend itself against its dispossessed and exasperated enemies, it
would be more despotic and cruel, as has always been the rule in
all revolutions.
While socialists and communists regard the individualistic,
capitalistic organization of society as an evil, and the
anarchists regard as an evil all government whatever, there are
royalists, conservatives, and capitalists who consider any
socialistic or communistic organization or anarchy as an evil, and
all these parties have no means other than violence to bring men
to agreement. Whichever of these parties were successful in
bringing their schemes to pass, must resort to support its
authority to all the existing methods of violence, and even invent
new ones.
The oppressed would be another set of people, and coercion would
take some new form; but the violence and oppression would be
unchanged or even more cruel, since hatred would be intensified by
the struggle, and new forms of oppression would have been devised.
So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at
revolution, all conspiracies, and all violent changes of
government. Every conflict only strengthens the means of
oppression in the hands of those who happen at a given moment to
be in power.
The position of our Christian society, and especially the ideals
most current in it, prove this in a strikingly convincing way.
There remains now only one sphere of human life not encroached
upon by government authority--that is the domestic, economic
sphere, the sphere of private life and labor. And even this is
now--thanks to the efforts of communists and socialists--being
gradually encroached upon by government, so that labor and
recreation, dwellings, dress, and food will gradually, if the
hopes of the reformers are successful, be prescribed and regulated
by government.
The slow progress of eighteen centuries has brought the Christian
nations again to the necessity of deciding the question they have
evaded--the question of the acceptance or non-acceptance of
Christ's teaching, and the question following upon it in social
life of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. But there
is this difference, that whereas formerly men could accept or
refuse to accept the solution given by Christ, now that solution
cannot be avoided, since it alone can save men from the slavery in
which they are caught like a net.
But it is not only the misery of the position which makes this
inevitable.
While the pagan organization has been proved more and more false,
the truth of the Christian religion has been growing more and more
evident.
Not in vain have the best men of Christian humanity, who
apprehended the truth by spiritual intuition, for eighteen
centuries testified to it in spite of every menace, every
privation, and every suffering. By their martyrdom they passed on
the truth to the masses, and impressed it on their hearts.
Christianity has penetrated into the consciousness of humanity,
not only negatively by the demonstration of the impossibility of
continuing in the pagan life, but also through its simplification,
its increased clearness and freedom from the superstitions
intermingled with it, and its diffusion through all classes of the
population.
Eighteen centuries of Christianity have not passed without an
effect even on those who accepted it only externally. These
eighteen centuries have brought men so far that even while they
continue to live the pagan life which is no longer consistent with
the development of humanity, they not only see clearly all the
wretchedness of their position, but in the depths of their souls
they believe (they can only live through this belief) that the
only salvation from this position is to be found in fulfilling the
Christian doctrine in its true significance. As to the time and
manner of salvation, opinions are divided according to the
intellectual development and the prejudices of each society. But
every man of the modern world recognizes that our salvation lies
in fulfilling the law of Christ. Some believers in the
supernatural character of Christianity hold that salvation will
come when all men are brought to believe in Christ, whose second
coming is at hand. Other believers in supernatural Christianity
hold that salvation will come through the Church, which will draw
all men into its fold, train them in the Christian virtues, and
transform their life. A third section, who do not admit the
divinity of Christ, hold that the salvation of mankind will be
brought about by slow and gradual progress, through which the
pagan principles of our existence will be replaced by the
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity--that is, by
Christian principles. A fourth section, who believe in the social
revolution, hold that salvation will come when through a violent
revolution men are forced into community of property, abolition of
government, and collective instead of individual industry--that is
to say, the realization of one side of the Christian doctrine. In
one way or another all men of our day in their inner consciousness
condemn the existing effete pagan order, and admit, often
unconsciously and while regarding themselves as hostile to
Christianity, that our salvation is only to be found in the
application of the Christian doctrine, or parts of it, in its true
significance to our daily life.
Christianity cannot, as its Founder said, be realized by the
majority of men all at once; it must grow like a huge tree from a
tiny seed. And so it has grown, and now has reached its full
development, not yet in actual life, but in the conscience of men
of to-day.
Now not only the minority, who have always comprehended
Christianity by spiritual intuition, but all the vast majority who
seem so far from it in their social existence recognize its true
significance.
Look at individual men in their private life, listen to their
standards of conduct in their judgment of one another; hear not
only their public utterances, but the counsels given by parents
and guardians to the young in their charge; and you will see that,
far as their social life based on violence may be from realizing
Christian truth, in their private life what is considered good by
all without exception is nothing but the Christian virtues; what
is considered as bad is nothing but the antichristian vices. Those
who consecrate their lives self-sacrificingly to the service of
humanity are regarded as the best men. The selfish, who make use
of the misfortunes of others for their own advantage, are regarded
as the worst of men.
Though some non-Christian ideals, such as strength, courage, and
wealth, are still worshiped by a few who have not been penetrated
by the Christian spirit, these ideals are out of date and are
abandoned, if not by all, at least by all those regarded as the
best people. There are no ideals, other than the Christian ideals,
which are accepted by all and regarded as binding on all.
The position of our Christian humanity, if you look at it from the
outside with all its cruelty and degradation of men, is terrible
indeed. But if one looks at it within, in its inner consciousness,
the spectacle it presents is absolutely different.
All the evil of our life seems to exist only because it has been
so for so long; those who do the evil have not had time yet to
learn how to act otherwise, though they do not want to act as they
do.
All the evil seems to exist through some cause independent of the
conscience of men.
Strange and contradictory as it seems, all men of the present day
hate the very social order they are themselves supporting.
I think it is Max Müller who describes the amazement of an Indian
convert to Christianity, who after absorbing the essence of the
Christian doctrine came to Europe and saw the actual life of
Christians. He could not recover from his astonishment at the
complete contrast between the reality and what he had expected to
find among Christian nations. If we feel no astonishment at the
contrast between our convictions and our conduct, that is because
the influences, tending to obscure the contrast, produce an effect
upon us too. We need only look at our life from the point of view
of that Indian, who understood Christianity in its true
significance, without any compromises or concessions, we need but
look at the savage brutalities of which our life is full, to be
appalled at the contradictions in the midst of which we live often
without observing them.
We need only recall the preparations for war, the mitrailleuses,
the silver-gilt bullets, the torpedoes, and--the Red Cross; the
solitary prison cells, the experiments of execution by
electricity--and the care of the hygienic welfare of prisoners;
the philanthropy of the rich, and their life, which produces the
poor they are benefiting.
And these inconsistencies are not, as it might seem, because men
pretend to be Christians while they are really pagans, but because
of something lacking in men, or some kind of force hindering them
from being what they already feel themselves to be in their
consciousness, and what they genuinely wish to be. Men of the
present day do not merely pretend to hate oppression, inequality,
class distinction, and every kind of cruelty to animals as well as
human beings. They genuinely detest all this, but they do not
know how to put a stop to it, or perhaps cannot decide to give up
what preserves it all, and seems to them necessary.
Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and
worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he
receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the
people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing
cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to
make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel
the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting
one's whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or
to preparing oneself and others for the work of murder. And ask
him whether it is laudable and worthy of a man, and suitable for a
Christian, to employ himself, for a salary, in seizing wretched,
misguided, often illiterate and drunken, creatures because they
appropriate the property of others--on a much smaller scale than
we do--or because they kill men in a different fashion from that
in which we undertake to do it--and shutting them in prison for
it, ill treating them and killing them; and whether it is laudable
and worthy of a man and a Christian to preach for a salary to the
people not Christianity, but superstitions which one knows to be
stupid and pernicious; and whether it is laudable and worthy of a
man to rob his neighbor for his gratification of what he wants to
satisfy his simplest needs, as the great landowners do; or to
force him to exhausting labor beyond his strength to augment one's
wealth, as do factory owners and manufacturers; or to profit by
the poverty of men to increase one's gains, as merchants do. And
everyone taken separately, especially if one's remarks are
directed at someone else, not himself, will answer, No! And yet
the very man who sees all the baseness of those actions, of his
own free will, uncoerced by anyone, often even for no pecuniary
profit, but only from childish vanity, for a china cross, a scrap
of ribbon, a bit of fringe he is allowed to wear, will enter
military service, become a magistrate or justice of the peace,
commissioner, archbishop, or beadle, though in fulfilling these
offices he must commit acts the baseness and shamefulness of which
he cannot fail to recognize.
I know that many of these men will confidently try to prove that
they have reasons for regarding their position as legitimate and
quite indispensable. They will say in their defense that
authority is given by God, that the functions of the state are
indispensable for the welfare of humanity, that property is not
opposed to Christianity, that the rich young man was only
commanded to sell all he had and give to the poor if he wished to
be perfect, that the existing distribution of property and our
commercial system must always remain as they are, and are to the
advantage of all, and so on. But, however much they try to
deceive themselves and others, they all know that what they are
doing is opposed to all the beliefs which they profess, and in the
depths of their souls, when they are left alone with their
conscience, they are ashamed and miserable at the recollection of
it, especially if the baseness of their action has been pointed
out to them. A man of the present day, whether he believes in the
divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to see that to assist in
the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in
taking from a poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on
cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle officials, who live in
luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some
man we have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the
streets; or in plundering and butchering in war; or in inculcating
savage and idolatrous superstitious in the place of the law of
Christ; or in impounding the cow found on one's land, though it
belongs to a man who has no land; or to cheat the workman in a
factory, by imposing fines for accidentally spoiled articles; or
making a poor man pay double the value for anything simply because
he is in the direst poverty;--not a man of the present day can
fail to know that all these actions are base and disgraceful, and
that they need not do them. They all know it. They know that
what they are doing is wrong, and would not do it for anything in
the world if they had the power of resisting the forces which shut
their eyes to the criminality of their actions and impel them to
commit them.
In nothing is the pitch of inconsistency modern life has attained
to so evident as in universal conscription, which is the last
resource and the final expression of violence.
Indeed, it is only because this state of universal armament has
been brought about gradually and imperceptibly, and because
governments have exerted, in maintaining it, every resource of
intimidation, corruption, brutalization, and violence, that we do
not see its flagrant inconsistency with the Christian ideas and
sentiments by which the modern world is permeated.
We are so accustomed to the inconsistency that we do not see all
the hideous folly and immorality of men voluntarily choosing the
profession of butchery as though it were an honorable career, of
poor wretches submitting to conscription, or in countries where
compulsory service has not been introduced, of people voluntarily
abandoning a life of industry to recruit soldiers and train them
as murderers. We know that all of these men are either
Christians, or profess humane and liberal principles, and they
know that they thus become partly responsible--through universal
conscription, personally responsible--for the most insane,
aimless, and brutal murders. And yet they all do it.
More than that, in Germany, where compulsory service first
originated, Caprivi has given expression to what had been hitherto
so assiduously concealed--that is, that the men that the soldiers
will have to kill are not foreigners alone, but their own
countrymen, the very working people from whom they themselves are
taken. And this admission has not opened people's eyes, has not
horrified them! They still go like sheep to the slaughter, and
submit to everything required of them.
And that is not all: the Emperor of Germany has lately shown still
more clearly the duties of the army, by thanking and rewarding a
soldier for killing a defenseless citizen who made his approach
incautiously. By rewarding an action always regarded as base and
cowardly even by men on the lowest level of morality, William has
shown that a soldier's chief duty--the one most appreciated by the
authorities--is that of executioner; and not a professional
executioner who kills only condemned criminals, but one ready to
butcher any innocent man at the word of command.
And even that is not all. In 1892, the same William, the ENFANT
TERRIBLE of state authority, who says plainly what other people
only think, in addressing some soldiers gave public utterance to
the following speech, which was reported next day in thousands of
newspapers: "Conscripts!" he said, "you have sworn fidelity to ME
before the altar and the minister of God! You are still too young
to understand all the importance of what has been said here; let
your care before all things be to obey the orders and instructions
given you. You have sworn fidelity TO ME, lads of my guard; THAT
MEANS THAT YOU ARE NOW MY SOLDIERS, that YOU HAVE GIVEN YOURSELVES
TO ME BODY AND SOUL. For you there is now but one enemy, MY
enemy. IN THESE DAYS OF SOCIALISTIC SEDITION IT MAY COME TO PASS
THAT I COMMAND YOU TO FIRE ON YOUR OWN KINDRED, YOUR BROTHERS,
EVEN YOUR OWN FATHERS AND MOTHERS--WHICH GOD FORBID!--even then
you are bound to obey my orders without hesitation."
This man expresses what all sensible rulers think, but studiously
conceal. He says openly that the soldiers are in HIS service, at
HIS disposal, and must be ready for HIS advantage to murder even
their brothers and fathers.
In the most brutal words he frankly exposes all the horrors and
criminality for which men prepare themselves in entering the army,
and the depths of ignominy to which they fall in promising
obedience. Like a bold hypnotizer, he tests the degree of
insensibility of the hypnotized subject. He touches his skin with
a red-hot iron; the skin smokes and scorches, but the sleeper does
not awake.
This miserable man, imbecile and drunk with power, outrages in
this utterance everything that can be sacred for a man of the
modern world. And yet all the Christians, liberals, and
cultivated people, far from resenting this outrage, did not even
observe it.
The last, the most extreme test is put before men in its coarsest
form. And they do not seem even to notice that it is a test, that
there is any choice about it. They seem to think there is no
course open but slavish submission. One would have thought these
insane words, which outrage everything a man of the present day
holds sacred, must rouse indignation. But there has been nothing
of the kind.
All the young men through the whole of Europe are exposed year
after year to this test, and with very few exceptions they
renounce all that a man can hold sacred, all express their
readiness to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the
bidding of the first crazy creature dressed up in a livery with
red and gold trimming, and only wait to be told where and when
they are to kill. And they actually are ready.
Every savage has something he holds sacred, something for which he
is ready to suffer, something he will not consent to do. But what
is it that is sacred to the civilized man of to-day? They say to
him: "You must become my slave, and this slavery may force you
to kill even your own father;" and he, often very well educated,
trained in all the sciences at the university, quietly puts his
head under the yoke. They dress him up in a clown's costume, and
order him to cut capers, turn and twist and bow, and kill--he does
it all submissively. And when they let him go, he seems to shake
himself and go back to his former life, and he continues to
discourse upon the dignity of man, liberty, equality, and
fraternity as before.
"Yes, but what is one to do?" people often ask in genuine
perplexity. "If everyone would stand out it would be something,
but by myself, I shall only suffer without doing any good to
anyone."
And that is true. A man with the social conception of life cannot
resist. The aim of his life is his personal welfare. It is better
for his personal welfare for him to submit, and he submits.
Whatever they do to him, however they torture or humiliate him, he
will submit, for, alone, he can do nothing; he has no principle
for the sake of which he could resist violence alone. And those
who control them never allow them to unite together. It is often
said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will
put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of
extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the
state conception of life to submission can be improved to
correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions,
they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like
senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move,
others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of
ribbon or gold lace.
And of this mass of men so brutalized as to be ready to promise to
kill their own parents, the social reformers--conservatives,
liberals, socialists, and anarchists--propose to form a rational
and moral society. What sort of moral and rational society can be
formed out of such elements? With warped and rotten planks you
cannot build a house, however you put them together. And to form
a rational moral society of such men is just as impossible a task.
They can be formed into nothing but a herd of cattle, driven by
the shouts and whips of the herdsmen. As indeed they are.
So, then, we have on one side men calling themselves Christians,
and professing the principles of liberty, equality, and
fraternity, and along with that ready, in the name of liberty, to
submit to the most slavish degradation; in the name of equality,
to accept the crudest, most senseless division of men by externals
merely into higher and lower classes, allies and enemies; and, in
the name of fraternity, ready to murder their brothers [see
footnote].
[Footnote: The fact that among certain nations, as
the English and the American, military service is not
compulsory (though already one hears there are some
who advocate that it should be made so) does not
affect the servility of the citizens to the government
in principle. Here we have each to go and kill or be
killed, there they have each to give the fruit of their
toil to pay for the recruiting and training of soldiers.]
The contradiction between life and conscience and the misery
resulting from it have reached the extreme limit and can go no
further. The state organization of life based on violence, the
aim of which was the security of personal, family, and social
welfare, has come to the point of renouncing the very objects for
which it was founded--it has reduced men to absolute renunciation
and loss of the welfare it was to secure.
The first half of the prophecy has been fulfilled in the
generation of men who have not accepted Christ's teaching, Their
descendants have been brought now to the absolute necessity of
patting the truth of the second half to the test of experience.