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 grandfather; 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 in 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 and four-fifths 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 fete, 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 mediaeval 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.

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[Transcribists note: This translation contains what seems to my

early 21st Century perception as mistakes, both in typography and

in standardness of language. I have left issues of standard

language uncorrected, and have only fixed typographical errors

in which the word was nearly unrecognizable, but clear from context.

An example: "...those who have seized power AUD who keep it..." was

changed to: "...those who have seized power AND who keep it...".

Another example: where he meant "village" the book has "vilage";

I left such misspellings as is.

In some cases, missing punctuation in a series was corrected, where

every other member of the series is punctuated: 1. 2. 3 4.

If I had a doubt, nothing was changed.

I indented paragraphs, for clarity, when Tolstoy quotes large blocks

of text from other authors. However, often Tolsoy interspersed

quoted material with his commentary [as when talking about the author

Farrar]. I was not able to separate these for fear of editing the

author.

Italics were represented here, with the substitution of capital

letters.

Translations for long passages of French follow in the footnotes.]

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