TOLSTOI'S TEACHING
1.--GENERAL
I. Lef Nikolayevitch Tolstoi was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana,
district of Krapivna, government of Tula. From 1843 to 1846 he studied
in Kazan at first oriental languages, then jurisprudence; from 1847 to
1848, in St. Petersburg, jurisprudence. After a lengthy stay at Yasnaya
Polyana, he entered an artillery regiment in the Caucasus, in 1851; he
became an officer, remained in the Caucasus till 1853, then served in
the Crimean war, and left the army in 1855.
Tolstoi now lived at first in St. Petersburg. In 1857 he took a lengthy
tour in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. After his return he
lived mostly in Moscow till 1860. In 1860-1861 he traveled in Germany,
France, Italy, England, and Belgium; in Brussels he made the
acquaintance of Proudhon.
Since 1861 Tolstoi has lived almost uninterruptedly at Yasnaya Polyana,
as at once agriculturist and author.
Tolstoi has published numerous works; his works up to 1878 are mostly
stories, among which the two novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina"
are notable; his later works are mostly of a philosophical nature.
2. Of special importance for Tolstoi's teaching about law, the State,
and property are his works "My Confession" (1879), "The Gospel in Brief"
(1880), "What I Believe" (1884) [also known in English as "My
Religion"], "What Shall We Do Then?" (1885), "On Life" (1887), "The
Kingdom of God is Within You; or, Christianity not a mystical doctrine,
but a new life-conception" (1893).
3. Tolstoi does not call his teaching about law, the State, and property
"Anarchism." He designates as "Anarchism" the teaching which sets up as
its goal a life without government and wishes to see this realized by
the application of force.[859]
2.--BASIS
_According to Tolstoi our supreme law is love; from this he derives the
commandment not to resist evil by force._
1. Tolstoi designates "Christianity"[860] as his basis; but by
Christianity he means not the doctrine of one of the Christian churches,
neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic nor that of any of the Protestant
bodies,[861] but the pure teaching of Christ.[862]
"Strange as it may sound, the churches have always been not merely alien
but downright hostile to the teaching of Christ, and they must needs be
so. The churches are not, as many think, institutions that are based on
a Christian origin and have only erred a little from the right way; the
churches as such, as associations that assert their infallibility, are
anti-Christian institutions. The Christian churches and Christianity
have no fellowship except in name; nay, the two are utterly opposite and
hostile elements. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation,
rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness,
progress, life."[863] The church has "so transformed Christ's teaching
to suit the world that there no longer resulted from it any demands, and
that men could go on living as they had hitherto lived. The church
yielded to the world, and, having yielded, followed it. The world did
everything that it chose, and left the church to hobble after as well as
it could with its teachings about the meaning of life. The world led its
life, contrary to Christ's teaching in each and every point, and the
church contrived subtleties to demonstrate that in living contrary to
Christ's law men were living in harmony with it. And it ended in the
world's beginning to lead a life worse than the life of the heathen, and
the church's daring not only to justify such a life but even to assert
that this was precisely what corresponded to Christ's teaching."[864]
Particularly different from Christ's teaching is the church
"creed,"[865]--that is, the totality of the utterly incomprehensible and
therefore useless "dogmas."[866] "Of a God, external creator, origin of
all origins, we know nothing";[867] "God is the spirit in man,"[868]
"his conscience,"[869] "the knowledge of life";[870] "every man
recognizes in himself a free rational spirit independent of the flesh:
this spirit is what we call God."[871] Christ was a man,[872] "the son
of an unknown father; as he did not know his father, in his childhood he
called God his father";[873] and he was a son of God as to his spirit,
as every man is a son of God,[874] he embodied "Man confessing his
sonship of God."[875] Those who "assert that Christ professed to redeem
with his blood mankind fallen by Adam, that God is a trinity, that the
Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and that it passes to the priest
by the laying on of hands, that seven mysteries are necessary to
salvation, and so forth,"[876] "preach doctrines utterly alien to
Christ."[877] "Never did Christ with a single word attest the personal
resurrection and the immortality of man beyond the grave,"[878] which
indeed is "a very low and coarse idea";[879] the Ascension and the
Resurrection are to be counted among "the most objectionable
miracles."[880]
Tolstoi accepts Christ's teaching as valid not on the ground of faith in
a revelation, but solely for its rationality. Faith in a revelation "was
the main reason why the teaching was at first misunderstood and later
mutilated outright."[881] Faith in Christ is "not a trusting in
something related to Christ, but the knowledge of the truth."[882]
"'There is a law of evolution, and therefore one must live only his own
personal life and leave the rest to the law of evolution,' is the last
word of the refined culture of our day, and, at the same time, of that
obscuration of consciousness to which the cultured classes are a
prey."[883] But "human life, from getting up in the morning to going to
bed at night, is an unbroken series of actions; man must daily choose
out from hundreds of actions possible to him those actions which he will
perform; therefore, man cannot live without something to guide the
choice of his actions."[884] Now, reason alone can offer him this guide.
"Reason is that law, recognized by man, according to which his life is
to be accomplished."[885] "If there is no higher reason,--and such there
is not, nor can anything prove its existence,--then my reason is the
supreme judge of my life."[886] "The ever-increasing subjugation"[887]
"of the bestial personality to the rational consciousness"[888] is "the
true life,"[889] is "life"[890] as opposed to mere "existence."[891]
"It used to be said, 'Do not argue, but believe in the duty that we have
prescribed to you; reason will deceive you; faith alone will bring you
the true happiness of life.' And the man exerted himself to believe, and
he believed. But intercourse with other men showed him that in many
cases these believed something quite different, and asserted that this
other faith bestowed the highest happiness. It has become unavoidable to
decide the question which of the many faiths is the right one; and only
reason can decide this."[892] "If the Buddhist who has learned to know
Islam remains a Buddhist, he is no longer a Buddhist in faith but in
reason. As soon as another faith comes up before him, and with it the
question whether to reject his faith or this other, reason alone can
give him an answer. If he has learned to know Islam and has still
remained a Buddhist, then rational conviction has taken the place of his
former blind faith in Buddha."[893] "Man recognizes truth only by
reason, not by faith."[894]
"The law of reason reveals itself to men gradually."[895] "Eighteen
hundred years ago there appeared in the midst of the pagan Roman world a
remarkable new teaching, which was not comparable to any that had
preceded it, and which was ascribed to a man called Christ."[896] This
teaching contains "the very strictest, purest, and completest"[897]
apprehension of the law of reason to which "the human mind has hitherto
raised itself."[898] Christ's teaching is "reason itself";[899] it must
be accepted by men because it alone gives those rules of life "without
which no man ever has lived or can live, if he would live as a
man,--that is, with reason."[900] Man has, "on the basis of reason, no
right to refuse allegiance to it."[901]
2. Christ's teaching sets up love as the supreme law for us.
What is love? "What men who do not understand life call 'love' is only
the giving to certain conditions of their personal comfort a preference
over any others. When the man who does not understand life says that he
loves his wife or child or friend, he means by this only that his
wife's, child's, or friend's presence in his life heightens his personal
comfort."[902]
"True love is always renunciation of one's personal comfort"[903] for a
neighbor's sake. True love "is a condition of wishing well to all men,
such as commonly characterizes children but is produced in grown men
only by self-abnegation."[904] "What living man does not know the happy
feeling, even if he has felt it only once and in most cases only in
earliest childhood, of that emotion in which one wishes to love
everybody, neighbors and father and mother and brothers and bad men and
enemies and dog and horse and grass; one wishes only one thing, that it
were well with all, that all were happy; and still more does one wish
that he were himself capable of making all happy, one wishes he might
give himself, give his whole life, that all might be well off and enjoy
themselves. Just this, this alone, is that love in which man's life
consists."[905]
True love is "an ideal of full, infinite, divine perfection."[906]
"Divine perfection is the asymptote of human life, toward which it
constantly strives, to which it draws nearer and nearer, but which can
be attained only at infinity."[907] "True life, according to previous
teachings, consists in the fulfilling of commandments, the fulfilling of
the law; according to Christ's teaching it consists in the maximum
approach to the divine perfection which has been exhibited, and which is
felt in himself by every man."[908]
According to the teaching of Christ, love is our highest law. "The
commandment of love is the expression of the inmost heart of the
teaching."[909] There are "three conceptions of life, and only three:
first the personal or bestial, second the social or heathenish,"[910]
"third the Christian or divine."[911] The man of the bestial conception
of life, "the savage, acknowledges life only in himself; the mainspring
of his life is personal enjoyment. The heathenish, social man recognizes
life no longer in himself alone, but in a community of persons, in the
tribe, the family, the race, the State; the mainspring of his life is
reputation. The man of the divine conception of life acknowledges life
no longer in his person, nor yet in a community of persons, but in the
prime source of eternal, never-dying life--in God; the mainspring of his
life is love."[912]
That love is our supreme law according to Christ's teaching means
nothing else than that it is such according to reason. As early as 1852
Tolstoi gives utterance to the thought "That love and beneficence are
truth is the only truth on earth,"[913] and much later, in 1887, he
calls love "man's only rational activity,"[914] that which "resolves all
the contradictions of human life."[915] Love abolishes the insensate
activity directed to the filling of the bottomless tub of our bestial
personality,[916] does away with the foolish fight between beings that
strive after their own happiness,[917] gives a meaning independent of
space and time to life, which without it would flow off without meaning
in the face of death.[918]
3. From the law of love Christ's teaching derives the commandment not to
resist evil by force. "'Resist not evil' means 'never resist the evil
man', that is, 'never do violence to another', that is, 'never commit an
act that is contrary to love'."[919]
Christ expressly derived this commandment from the law of love. He gave
numerous commandments, among which five in the Sermon on the Mount are
notable; "these commandments do not constitute the teaching, they only
form one of the numberless stages of approach to perfection";[920] they
"are all negative, and only show"[921] what "at mankind's present
age"[922] we "have already the full possibility of not doing, along the
road by which we are striving to reach perfection."[923] The first of
the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount reads "Keep the peace
with all, and if the peace is broken use every effort to restore
it";[924] the second says "Let the man take only one woman and the woman
only one man, and let neither forsake the other under any pretext";[925]
the third, "make no vows";[926] the fourth, "endure injury, return not
evil for evil";[927] the fifth, "break not the peace to benefit thy
people."[928] Among these commandments the fourth is the most important;
it is enunciated in the fifth chapter of Matthew, verses 38-9: "Ye have
heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to
you, Resist not evil."[929] Tolstoi tells how to him this passage
"became the key of the whole."[930] "I needed only to take these words
simply and downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once everything in
Christ's whole teaching that had seemed confused to me, not only in the
Sermon on the Mount but in the Gospels altogether, was comprehensible to
me, and everything that had been contradictory agreed, and the main gist
appeared no longer useless but a necessity; everything formed a whole,
and the one confirmed the other past a doubt, like the pieces of a
shattered column that one has rightly put together."[931] The principle
of non-resistance binds together "the entire teaching into a whole; but
only when it is no mere dictum but a peremptory rule, a law."[932] "It
is really the key that opens everything, but only when it goes into the
inmost of the lock."[933]
We must necessarily derive the commandment not to resist evil by force
from the law of love. For this demands that either a sure, indisputable
criterion of evil be found, or all violent resistance to evil be
abandoned.[934] "Hitherto it has been the business now of the pope, now
of an emperor or king, now of an assembly of elected representatives,
now of the whole nation, to decide what was to be rated as an evil and
combated by violent resistance. But there have always been men, both
without and within the State, who have not acknowledged as binding upon
them either the decisions that were given out as divine commandments or
the decisions of the men who were clothed with sanctity or the
institutions that were supposed to represent the will of the people; men
who regarded as good what to the powers that be appeared evil, and who,
in opposition to the force of these powers, likewise made use of force.
The men who were clothed with sanctity regarded as an evil what appeared
good to the men and institutions that were clothed with secular
authority, and the combat grew ever sharper and sharper. Thus it came to
what it has come to to-day, to the complete obviousness of the fact that
there is not and cannot be a generally binding external definition of
evil."[935] But from this follows the necessity of accepting the
solution given by Christ.[936]
According to Tolstoi, the precept of non-resistance must not be taken
"as if it forbade every combat against evil."[937] It forbids only the
combating of evil by force.[938] But this it forbids in the broadest
sense. It refers, therefore, not only to evil practised against
ourselves, but also to evil practised against our fellow-men;[939] when
Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, he was defending
"not himself but his beloved divine Teacher, but Christ forbade him
outright and said 'All who take the sword will perish by the
sword.'"[940] Nor does the precept say that only a part of men are under
obligation "to submit without a contest to what is prescribed to them
by certain authorities,"[941] but it forbids "everybody, therefore even
those in whom power is vested, and these especially, to use force in any
case against anybody."[942]
3.--LAW
I. _For love's sake, particularly on the ground of the commandment not
to resist evil by force, Tolstoi rejects law; not unconditionally,
indeed, but as an institution for the more highly developed peoples of
our time._ To be sure, he speaks only of enacted laws; but he means all
law,[943] for he rejects on principle every norm based on the will of
men,[944] upheld by human force,[945] especially by courts,[946] capable
of deviating from the moral law,[947] of being different in different
territories,[948] and of being at any time arbitrarily changed.[949]
Perhaps once upon a time law was better than its non-existence. Law is
"upheld by violence";[950] on the other hand, it guards against violence
of individuals to each other;[951] perhaps there was once a time when
the former violence was less than the latter.[952] Now, at any rate,
this time is past for us; manners have grown milder; the men of our time
"acknowledge the commandments of philanthropy, of sympathy with one's
neighbor, and ask only the possibility of quiet, peaceable life."[953]
Law offends against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[954]
Christ declared this. The words "Judge not, that ye be not judged"
(Matt. 7.1), "Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned" (Luke 6.37),
"mean not only 'do not judge your neighbor in words,' but also 'do not
condemn him by act; do not judge your neighbor according to your human
laws by your courts.'"[955] Christ here speaks not merely "of every
individual's personal relation to the court,"[956] but rejects "the
administration of law itself."[957] "He says, 'You believe that your
laws better the evil; they only make it greater; there is only one way
to check evil, and this consists in returning good for evil, doing good
to all without discrimination.'"[958] And "my heart and my reason"[959]
say to me the same as Christ says.
But this is not the only objection to be made against law. "Authority
condemns in the rigid form of law only what public opinion has in most
cases long since disallowed and condemned; withal, public opinion
disallows and condemns all actions that are contrary to the moral law,
but the law condemns and prosecutes only the actions included within
certain quite definite and very narrow limits, and thereby, in a
measure, justifies all similar actions that do not come within these
limits. Ever since Moses's day public opinion has regarded selfishness,
sensuality, and cruelty as evils and has condemned it; it has repudiated
and condemned every form of selfishness, not only the appropriation of
others' property by force, fraud, or guile, but exploitation
altogether; it has condemned every sort of unchastity, be it with a
concubine, a slave, a divorced woman, or even with one's own wife; it
has condemned all cruelty, as it finds expression in the ill-treating,
starving, and killing not only of men but of animals too. But the law
prosecutes only particular forms of selfishness, like theft and fraud,
and only particular forms of unchastity and cruelty, like marital
infidelity, murder, and mayhem; therefore, in a measure, it permits all
the forms of selfishness, unchastity, and cruelty that do not come under
its narrow definitions inspired by a false conception."[960]
"The Jew could easily submit to his laws, for he did not doubt that they
were written by God's finger; likewise the Roman, as he thought they
originated from the nymph Egeria; and man in general so long as he
regarded the princes who gave him laws as God's anointed, or believed
that the legislating assemblies had the wish and the capacity to make
the best laws."[961] But "as early as the time when Christianity made
its appearance men were beginning to comprehend that human laws were
written by men; that men, whatever outward splendor may enshroud them,
cannot be infallible, and that erring men do not become infallible even
by getting together and calling themselves 'Senate' or something
else."[962] "We know how laws are made; we have all been behind the
scenes; we all know that the laws are products of selfishness,
deception, partisanship, that true justice does not and cannot dwell in
them."[963] Therefore "the recognition of any special laws is a sign of
the crassest ignorance."[964]
II. _Love requires that in place of law it itself be the law for men._
From this it follows that instead of law Christ's commandments should be
our rule of action.[965] But this is "the Kingdom of God on earth."[966]
"When the day and the hour of the Kingdom of God appear, depends on men
themselves alone."[967] "Each must only begin to do what we must do, and
cease to do what we must not do, and the near future will bring the
promised Kingdom of God."[968] "If only everybody would bear witness, in
the measure of his strength, to the truth that he knows, or at least not
defend as truth the untruth in which he lives, then in this very year
1893 there would take place such changes toward the setting up of truth
on earth as we dare not dream of for centuries to come."[969] "Only a
little effort more, and the Galilean has won."[970]
The Kingdom of God is "not outside in the world, but in man's
soul."[971] "The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither
will men say, 'Lo here!' or, 'There!' for, behold, the kingdom of God is
within you (Luke 17.20)."[972] The Kingdom of God is nothing else than
the following of Christ's commandments, especially the five commandments
of the Sermon on the Mount,[973] which tell us how we must act in our
present stage in order to correspond to the ideal of love as much as
possible,[974] and which command us to keep the peace and do everything
for its restoration when it is broken, to remain true to one another as
man and wife, to make no vows, to forgive injury and not return evil for
evil, and, finally, not to break the peace with anybody for our people's
sake.[975]
But what form will outward life take in the Kingdom of God? "The
disciple of Christ will be poor; that is, he will not live in the city
but in the country; he will not sit at home, but work in wood and field,
see the sunshine, the earth, the sky, and the beasts; he will not worry
over what he is to eat to tempt his appetite, and what he can do to help
his digestion, but will be hungry three times a day; he will not roll on
soft cushions and think upon deliverance from insomnia, but sleep; he
will be sick, suffer, and die like all men--the poor who are sick and
die seem to have an easier time of it than the rich--";[976] he "will
live in free fellowship with all men";[977] "the Kingdom of God on earth
is the peace of men with each other; thus it appeared to the prophets,
and thus it appears to every human heart."[978]
4.--THE STATE
II. _Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the
more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of the
State._
"Perhaps there was once a time when, in a low state of morality with a
general inclination of men to mutual violence, the existence of a power
limiting this violence was advantageous--that is, in which the State
violence was less than that of individuals against each other. But such
an advantage of State violence over its non-existence could not last;
the more the individuals' inclination to violence decreased and manners
grew milder, and the more the governments degenerated by having nothing
to check them, the more worthless did State violence grow. In this
change--in the moral evolution of the masses on the one hand and the
degeneration of the governments on the other--lies the whole history of
the last two thousand years."[979] "I cannot prove either the general
necessity of the State or its general perniciousness,"[980] "I know only
that on the one hand the State is no longer necessary for me, and that
on the other hand I can no longer do the things that are necessary for
the existence of the State."[981]
"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the State,"[982]
annihilates all government.[983] The State offends against love,
particularly against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[984]
And not only this; in founding a dominion[985] the State furthermore
offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and
there is equality among them all";[986] it is therefore to be rejected
even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal
institution. "That the Christian teaching has an eye only to the
redemption of the individual, and does not relate to public questions
and State affairs, is a bold and unfounded assertion."[987] "To every
honest, earnest man in our time it must be clear that true
Christianity--the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, love--is
incompatible with the State and its haughtiness, its deeds of violence,
its capital punishments and wars."[988] "The State is an idol";[989] its
objectionableness is independent of its form, be this "absolute
monarchy, the Convention, the Consulate, the empire of a first or third
Napoleon or yet of a Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or
the republic."[990]--Tolstoi carries this out into detail.
1. The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch.
The State is rule. Government in the State is "an association of men who
do violence to the rest."[991]
"All governments, the despotic and the liberal alike, have in our time
become what Herzen has so aptly called a Jenghis Khan with
telegraphs."[992] The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence
not in order to overcome evil, but solely for their advantage or from
caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they
believe that it is practised for their good,--that is, in order to
liberate them from evil,--but only because they cannot free themselves
from it."[993] "If Nice is united with France, Lorraine with Germany,
Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divided, if both Ireland and India
are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill
the Africans, expel the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in
Russia, it is not because this is good or necessary or useful for men
and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in
whom the power is vested."[994]
The State is the rule of the bad.[995] "'If the State power were to be
annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked,' say the
defenders of State rule."[996] But has the power, when it has passed
from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the
better men? "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robespierre, Napoleon, came to
power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better
rule, when the power was vested in the Versaillese or in the Communards,
when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of the government?
When Peter the Third was czar, and then when after his murder the
authority of czar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catharine and
in another by Pugatcheff, who was wicked then and who was good? All men
who find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in
order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as
self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good
protection against the bad."[997] But in reality those who grasp and
hold the power cannot possibly be the better.[998] "In order to obtain
and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not
apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride,
craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without
hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can
arise or hold its own."[999] "It is downright ridiculous to speak of
Christians in power."[1000] To this it is to be added "that the
possession of power depraves men."[1001] "The men who have the power
cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such
frightful authority."[1002] "However many means men have invented to
hinder the possessors of power from subordinating the welfare of the
whole to their own advantage, hitherto not one of these means has
worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power--be they
emperors, ministers, chiefs of police, or common policemen--are, just
because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the
subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than those who
have no power; nor can it be otherwise."[1003]
The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch. We shall
always find "that the scheming of the possessors of authority--nay,
their unconscious effort--is directed toward weakening the victims of
their authority as much as possible; for, the weaker the victim is, the
more easily can he be held down."[1004] "To-day there is only one sphere
of human activity left that has not been conquered by the authority of
government: the sphere of the family, of housekeeping, private life,
labor. And even this sphere, thanks to the fighting of the Communists
and Socialists, the governments are already beginning to invade, so that
soon, if the reformers have their way, work and rest, housing,
clothing, and food, will likewise be fixed and regulated by the
governments."[1005] "The most fearful band of robbers is not so horrible
as a State organization. Every robber chief is at any rate limited by
the fact that the men who make up his band retain at least a part of
human liberty, and can refuse to commit acts which are repugnant to
their consciences."[1006] But in the State there is no such limit; "no
crime is so horrible that it will not be committed by the officials and
the army at the will of him--Boulanger, Pugatcheff, Napoleon--who
accidentally stands at the head."[1007]
2. The rule in the State is based on physical force.
Every government has for its prop the fact that there are in the State
armed men who are ready to execute the government's will by physical
force, a class "educated to kill those whose killing the authorities
command."[1008] Such men are the police[1009] and especially the
army.[1010] The army is nothing else than a collectivity of "disciplined
murderers",[1011] its training is "instruction in murdering",[1012] its
victories are "deeds of murder."[1013] "The army has always formed the
basis of power, and does to this day. The power is always in the hands
of those who command the army, and, from the Roman Caesars to the Russian
and German emperors, all possessors of power have always cared first and
foremost for their armies."[1014]
In the first place, the army upholds the government's rule against
external assaults. It protects it against having the rule taken from it
by another government.[1015] War is nothing but a contest of two or more
governments for the rule over their subjects. It is "impossible to
establish international peace in a rational way, by treaty or
arbitration, so long as the insensate and pernicious subjection of
nations to governments continues to exist."[1016] In consequence of this
importance of armies "every State is compelled to increase its army to
face the others, and this increase has the effect of a contagion, as
Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years since."[1017]
But, if one thinks armies are kept by governments only for external
defence, he forgets "that governments need armies particularly to
protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects."[1018] "In
the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why money was
needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the
chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty officers were
necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprivi merely said out loud
what everybody knows, carefully as it is concealed from the
peoples,--the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and
Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior
regiments get their contingents from the frontiers and the frontier
regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what
everybody knows or at least feels,--to wit, that the existing order
exists not because it must exist or because the people wills its
existence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed
petty-officers and officers and generals, keeps it up."[1019]
3. The rule in the State is based on the physical force of the ruled.
It is peculiar to government that it demands from the citizens the very
force on which it is based, and that consequently in the State "all the
citizens are their own oppressors."[1020] The government demands from
the citizens both force and the supporting of force. Here belongs the
obligation, general in Russia, to take an oath at the czar's accession
to the throne, for by this oath one vows obedience to the
authorities,--that is, to men who are devoted to violence; likewise the
obligation to pay taxes, for the taxes are used for works of violence,
and the compulsory use of passports, for by taking out a passport one
acknowledges his dependence on the State's institution of violence;
withal the obligation to testify in court and to take part in the court
as juryman, for every court is the fulfilment of the commandment of
revenge; furthermore, the obligation to police service which in Russia
rests upon all the country people, for this service demands that we do
violence to our brother and torment him; and above all the general
obligation to military service,--that is, the obligation to be
executioners and to prepare ourselves for service as executioners.[1021]
The unchristianness of the State comes to light most plainly in the
general obligation to military service: "every man has to take in hand
deadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at
least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife,--that is, be
ready for killing."[1022]
But how comes it that the citizens fulfil these demands of the
government, though the government is based on this very fulfilment, and
so mutually oppress each other? This is possible only by "a highly
artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress,
in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they
cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of
influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of
a chain."[1023] The first means is "what is best described as the
hypnotization of the people."[1024] This hypnotization leads men to "the
erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be
upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being
upheld."[1025] The hypnotization is accomplished "by fomenting the two
forms of superstition called religion and patriotism";[1026] it "begins
its influence even in childhood, and continues it till death."[1027]
With reference to this hypnotization one may say that State authority is
based on the fraudulent misleading of public opinion.[1028] The second
means consists in "bribery; that is, in taking from the laboring
populace its wealth, by money taxes, and dividing this among the
officials, who, for this pay, must maintain and strengthen the
enslavement of the people."[1029] The officials "more or less believe in
the unchangeability of the existing order, mainly because it benefits
them."[1030] With reference to this bribery one may say that State
authority is based on the selfishness of those to whom it guarantees
profitable positions.[1031] The third means is "intimidation. It
consists in setting down the present State order--of whatever sort, be
it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic--as
something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful
penalties upon every attempt to change it."[1032] Finally, the fourth
means is to "separate a certain part of all the men whom they have
stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men
to special stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that
they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the
government sees fit to resolve upon."[1033] This is done in the army, to
which, at present, all young men belong by virtue of the general
obligation to military service.[1034] "With this the circle of violence
is made complete. Intimidation, bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist
as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing
men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money,
hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very
soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."[1035]
II. _Love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments
take the place of the State._ "To-day every man who thinks, however
little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto
lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life."[1036] "The
Christian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce the heathen
forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new life on the Christian
bases that it recognizes."[1037]
1. Even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. But
what is to hold them together in these societies?
Not a promise, at any rate. Christ commands us to make "no vows,"[1038]
to "promise men nothing."[1039] "The Christian cannot promise that he
will do or not do a particular thing at a particular hour, because he
cannot know what the law of love, which it is the meaning of his life to
obey, will demand of him at that hour."[1040] And still less can he
"give his word to fulfil somebody's will, without knowing what the
substance of this will is to be";[1041] by the mere fact of such a
promise he would "make it manifest that the inward divine law is no
longer the sole law of his life";[1042] "one cannot serve two
masters."[1043]
Men are to be held together in societies in future by the mental
influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon
the less advanced. "Mental influence is such a way of working upon a man
that by it his wishes change and coincide with what is wanted of him;
the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own
wishes."[1044] Now, the force "by which men can live in societies"[1045]
is found in the mental influence which the men who have made progress
in knowledge exert upon the less advanced, in the "characteristic of
little-thinking men, that they subordinate themselves to the directions
of those who stand on a higher level of knowledge."[1046] In consequence
of this characteristic "a body of men put themselves under the same
rational principles, the minority consciously, because the principles
agree with the demands of their reason, and the majority unconsciously,
because the principles have become public opinion."[1047] "In this
subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory."[1048]
2. But in the future societary condition how shall the functions which
the State at present performs be performed? Here people usually have
three things in mind.[1049]
First, protection against the bad men in our midst.[1050] "But who are
the bad men among us? If there once were such men three or four
centuries ago, when people still paraded warlike arts and equipments and
looked upon killing as a brilliant deed, they are gone to-day anyhow;
nobody any longer carries weapons, everybody acknowledges the commands
of philanthropy. But, if by the men from whom the State must protect us
we mean the criminals, then we know that they are not special creatures
like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like
committing crimes as little as we do; we know that the activity of
governments with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not
correspond to the present stage of morality, their prisons, tortures,
gallows, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people
than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to
the diminution of such criminals."[1051] If we are Christians and start
from the principle that "what our life exists for is the serving of
others, then no one will be foolish enough to rob men that serve him of
their means of support or to kill them. Miklucho-Maclay settled among
the wildest so-called 'savages', and they not only left him alive but
loved him and submitted to his authority, solely because he did not fear
them, asked nothing of them, and did them good."[1052]
Secondly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition we
can find protection against external enemies.[1053] But we do know "that
the nations of Europe profess the principles of liberty and fraternity,
and therefore need no protection against each other; but, if it were a
protection against the barbarians that was meant, a thousandth part of
the armies that are now kept up would suffice. State authority not
merely leaves in existence the danger of hostile attacks, but even
itself provokes this danger."[1054] But, "if there existed a community
of Christians who did evil to nobody and gave to others all the
superfluous products of their labor, then no enemy, neither the German
nor the Turk nor the savage, would kill or vex such men; all one could
do would be to take from them what they were ready to give voluntarily
without distinguishing between Russians, Germans, Turks, and
savages."[1055]
Thirdly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition
institutions for education, popular culture, religion, commerce, etc.
are to be possible.[1056] "Perhaps there was once a time when men lived
so far apart, when the means for coming together and exchanging thoughts
were so undeveloped, that people could not, without a State centre,
discuss and agree on any matter either of trade and economy or of
culture. But to-day this separation no longer exists; the means of
intercourse have developed extraordinarily; for the forming of
societies, associations, corporations, for the gathering of congresses
and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are
not needed; nay, in most cases they are rather a hindrance than a help
toward the attainment of such ends."[1057]
3. But what form will men's life together in the future societary
condition take in detail? "The future will be as circumstances and men
shall make it."[1058] We are not at this moment able to get perfectly
clear ideas of it.[1059]
"Men say, 'What will the new orders be like, that are to take the place
of the present ones? So long as we do not know what form our life will
take in future, we will not go forward, we will not stir from this
spot.'"[1060] "If Columbus had gone to making such observations, he
would never have weighed anchor. It was insanity to steer across an
ocean that no man had ever yet sailed upon toward a land whose
existence was a question. With this insanity, he discovered the New
World. It would certainly be more convenient if nations had nothing to
do but move out of one ready-furnished mansion into another and a
better; only, by bad luck, there is nobody there to furnish the new
quarters."[1061]
But what disquiets men in their imagining of the future is "less the
question 'What will be?' They are tormented by the question 'How are we
to live without all the familiar conditions of our existence, that are
called science, art, civilization, culture?'"[1062] "But all these, bear
in mind, are only forms in which truth appears. The change that lies
before us will be an approach to the truth and its realization. How can
the forms in which truth appears be brought to naught by an approach to
the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means
will they be brought to naught. Only that which was false in the forms
of its appearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine
will but unfold itself the more splendidly."[1063]
"If the individual man's life were completely known to him when he
passes from one stage of maturity to another, he would have no reason
for living. So it is with the life of mankind too; if at its entrance
upon a new stage of growth a programme lay before it already drawn up,
this would be the surest sign that it was not alive, not progressing,
but that it was sticking at one point. The details of a new order of
life cannot be known to us, they have to be worked out by us ourselves.
Life consists only in learning to know the unknown, and putting our
action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of
the individual, in this the life of human societies and of
humanity."[1064]
5.--PROPERTY
I. _Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the
more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of
property._
Perhaps there was once a time when the violence necessary to secure the
individual in the possession of a piece of goods against all others was
less than the violence which would have been practised in a general
fight for the possession of the goods, so that the existence of property
was better than its non-existence. But at any rate this time is past,
the existing order has "lived out its time";[1065] among the men of
to-day no wild fight for the possession of goods would break out even if
there were no property; they all "profess allegiance to the commands of
philanthropy,"[1066] each of them "knows that all men have equal rights
in the goods of the world,"[1067] and already we see "many a rich man
renounce his inheritance from a specially delicate sense of germinant
public opinion."[1068]
Property offends against love, especially against the commandment not to
resist evil by force.[1069] But not only this; in founding a dominion of
possessors over non-possessors it also offends against the principle
that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them
all";[1070] and it is therefore to be rejected, even aside from the
violence on which it is based as a legal institution. The rich are under
"guilt by the very fact that they are rich."[1071] It is "a crime"[1072]
that tens of thousands of "hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings
are living in Moscow, while I with a few thousand others have tenderloin
and sturgeon for dinner and cover horses and floors with blankets and
carpets."[1073] I shall be "an accomplice in this unending and
uninterrupted crime so long as I still have a superfluous bit of bread
while another has no bread at all, or still possess two garments while
another does not possess even one."[1074]--Tolstoi carries this out into
detail.
1. Property means the dominion of the possessors over the
non-possessors.
Property is the exclusive right to use some things, whether one actually
uses them or not.[1075] "Many of the men who called me their horse,"
Tolstoi makes the horse Linen-Measurer say, "did not ride me; quite
different men rode me. Nor did they feed me; quite different men fed me.
Nor was it those who called me their horse that did me kindnesses, but
coachmen, veterinary surgeons, strangers altogether. Later, when the
circle of my observations grew wider, I convinced myself that the idea
'mine,' which has no other basis than men's low and bestial propensity
which they call 'sense of ownership' or 'right of property,' finds
application not only with respect to us horses. A man says 'this house
is mine' and never lives in it, he only attends to the building and
repair of the house. A merchant says 'my store, my dry-goods store,' and
his clothing is not of the best fabrics he has in his store. There are
men who call a piece of land 'mine' and have never seen this piece of
land nor set foot on it. What men aim at in life is not to do what they
think good, but to call as many things as possible 'mine.'"[1076]
But the significance of property consists in the fact that the poor man
who has no property is dependent on the rich man who has property; in
order to come by the things which he needs for his living, but which
belong to another, he must do what this other wills--in particular, he
must work for him. Thus property divides men into "two castes, an
oppressed laboring caste that famishes and suffers and an idle
oppressing caste that enjoys and lives in superfluity."[1077] "We are
all brothers, and yet every morning my brother or my sister carries out
my dishes. We are all brothers, but every morning I have to have my
cigar, my sugar, my mirror, and other such things, in whose production
healthy brothers and sisters, people like me, have sacrificed and are
sacrificing their health."[1078] "I spend my whole life in the following
way: I eat, talk, and listen; eat, write, and read--that is, talk and
listen again; eat and play; eat, talk, and listen again; eat and go to
bed; and so it goes on, one day like another. I cannot do, do not know
how to do, anything beyond this. And, that I may be able to do this,
the porter, the farmer, the cook, the cook's maid, the lackey, the
coachman, the laundress, must work from morning till night, not to speak
of the work of other men which is necessary in order that those
coachmen, cooks, lackeys, and so on may have all that they need when
they work for me--the axes, barrels, brushes, dishes, furniture,
likewise the wax, the blacking, the kerosene, the hay, the wood, the
beef. All of them have to work day by day, early and late, that I may be
able to talk, eat, and sleep."[1079]
This significance of property makes itself especially felt in the case
of the things that are necessary for the producing of other things, and
so most notably in the case of land and tools.[1080] "There can be no
farmer without land that he tills, without scythes, wagons, and horses;
no shoemaker is possible without a house built on the earth, without
water, air, and tools";[1081] but property means that in many cases "the
farmer possesses no land, no horses, no scythe, the shoemaker no house,
no water, no awl: that somebody is keeping these things back from
them."[1082] This leads to the consequence "that for a large fraction of
the workers the natural conditions of production are deranged, that this
fraction is necessitated to use other people's stock,"[1083] and may by
the owner of the stock be compelled "to work not on their own account,
but for an employer."[1084] Consequently the workman works "not for
himself, to suit his own wish, but under compulsion, to suit the whim of
some idle persons who live in superfluity, for the benefit of some rich
man, the proprietor of a factory or other industrial plant."[1085] Thus
property means the exploitation of the laborer by those to whom the land
and tools belong; it means "that the products of human labor pass more
and more out of the hands of the laboring masses into the hands of the
unlaboring."[1086]
Furthermore, the significance of property as making the poor dependent
on the rich becomes especially prominent in the case of money. "Money is
a value that remains always equal, that always ranks as correct and
legal."[1087] Consequently, as the saying is, "he who has money has in
his pocket those who have none."[1088] "Money is a new form of slavery,
distinguished from the old solely by its impersonality, by the lack of
any human relation between the master and the slave";[1089] for "the
essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's
labor-force by compulsion, and it is quite immaterial whether the
drawing of this benefit is founded upon property in the slave or upon
property in money which is indispensable to the other man."[1090] "Now,
honestly, of what sort is my money, and how have I come by it? I got
part for the land that I inherited from my father. The peasant sold his
last sheep, his last cow, to pay me this money. Another part of my
assets consists of the sums which I have received for my literary
productions, my books. If my books are harmful, then by them I have
seduced the purchasers to evil and have acquired the money by bad
means. If, on the contrary, my books are useful to people, the case is
still worse; I have not given them without ceremony to those who had a
use for them, but have said 'Give me seventeen rubles and you shall have
them,' and, as in the other case the peasant sold his last sheep, so
here the poor student or teacher, and many another poor person, have
denied themselves the plainest necessities to give me the money. And
thus I have piled up a quantity of such money, and what do I do with it?
I bring it to the city and give it to the poor here on condition that
they satisfy all my whims, that they come after me into the city to
clean the sidewalks for me, and to make me lamps, shoes, and so forth,
in the factories. With my money I take all their products to myself, and
I take pains to give them as little as possible and get from them as
much as possible for it. And then all at once, quite unexpectedly, I
begin to distribute to the poor this same money gratis--not to all, but
arbitrarily to any whom I happen to take up at random";[1091] that is, I
take from the poor thousands of rubles with one hand, and with the other
I distribute to some of them a few kopeks.[1092]
2. The dominion which property involves, of possessors over
non-possessors, is based on physical force.
"If the vast wealth that the laborers have piled up ranks not as the
property of all, but only as that of an elect few,--if the power of
raising taxes from labor and using them at pleasure is reserved to some
men,--this is not based on the fact that the people want to have it so
or that by nature it must be so, but on the fact that the ruling
classes see their advantage in it and determine it so by virtue of their
power over men's bodies";[1093] it is based on "violence and slaying and
the threat thereof."[1094] "If men hand over the greatest part of the
product of their labor to the capitalist or landlord, though they, as do
all laborers now, hold this to be unjust,"[1095] they do it "only
because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not."[1096]
"One may even say outright that in our society, in which to every
well-to-do man living an aristocratic life there are ten weary,
ravenous, envious laborers, probably pining away with wife and children
too, all the privileges of the rich, all their luxury and their
abundance, are acquired and secured only by chastisement, imprisonment,
and capital punishment."[1097]
Property is upheld by the police[1098] and the army.[1099] "We may act
as if we did not see the policeman walking up and down before the window
with loaded revolver to protect us while we eat a savory meal or look at
a new play, and as if we had no inkling of the soldiers who are every
moment ready to go with rifle and cartridges where any one tries to
infringe on our property. Yet we well know, if we can finish our meal
and see the new play in peace, if we can drive out or hunt or attend a
festival or a race undisturbed, we have to thank for this only the
policeman's bullet and the soldier's weapon, which are ready to pierce
the poor victim of hunger who looks upon our enjoyments from his corner
with grumbling stomach, and who would at once disturb them if the
policeman with his revolver went away, or if in the barracks there were
no longer any soldiers standing ready to appear at our first
call."[1100]
3. The dominion which property involves, of the possessors over the
non-possessors, is based on the physical force of the ruled.
Those very men of the non-possessing classes who through property are
dependent on the possessing classes must do police duty, serve in the
army, pay the taxes out of which police and army are kept up, and in
these and other ways either themselves exercise or at least support the
physical force by which property is upheld.[1101] "If there did not
exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any one whatever at
the word of command, no one would dare assert what the non-laboring
landlords now do all of them so confidently assert,--that the soil which
surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a
man who does not work on it";[1102] it would "not come into the head of
the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown
up under their eyes";[1103] nor would any one say "that the stores of
grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must
remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit."[1104]
II. _Love requires that a distribution based solely on its commandments
take the place of property._ "The impossibility of continuing the life
that has hitherto been led, and the necessity of determining new forms
of life,"[1105] relate to the distribution of goods as well as to other
things. "The abolition of property,"[1106] and its replacement by a new
kind of distribution of goods, is one of the "questions now in
order."[1107]
According to the law of love, every man who works as he has strength
should have so much--but only so much--as he needs.
1. That every man who works as he has strength should have so much as he
needs and no more is a corollary from two precepts which follow from the
law of love.
The first of these precepts says, Man shall "ask no work from others,
but himself devote his whole life to work for others. 'Man lives not to
be served but to serve.'"[1108] Therefore, in particular, he is not to
keep accounts with others about his work, or think that he "has the more
of a living to claim, the greater or more useful his quantum of work
done is."[1109] Following this precept provides every man with what he
needs. This is true primarily of the healthy adult. "If a man works, his
work feeds him. If another makes use of this man's work for himself, he
will feed him for the very reason that he is making use of his
work."[1110] Man assures himself of a living "not by taking it away from
others, but by making himself useful and necessary to others. The more
necessary he is to others, the more assured is his existence."[1111] But
the following of the precept to serve others also provides the sick, the
aged, and children with their living. Men "do not stop feeding an
animal when it falls sick; they do not even kill an old horse, but give
it work appropriate to its strength; they bring up whole families of
little lambs, pigs, and puppies, because they expect benefit from them.
How, then, should they not support the sick man who is necessary to
them? How should they not find appropriate work for old and young, and
bring up human beings who will in turn work for them?"[1112]
The second precept that follows from the law of love, and of which a
corollary is that every man who works as he has strength should have as
much as he needs and no more, bids us "Share what you have with the
poor; gather no riches."[1113] "To the question of his hearers, what
they were to do, John the Baptist gave the short, clear, simple answer,
'He who hath two coats, let him share with him who hath none; and he who
hath food let him do likewise' (Luke 3.10-11). And Christ too made the
same declaration several times, only still more unambiguously and
clearly. He said, 'Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich.' He said that
one could not serve God and Mammon at once. He not only forbade his
disciples to take money, but also to have two garments. He told the rich
young man that because he was rich he could not enter into the Kingdom
of God, and that a camel should sooner go through a needle's eye than a
rich man come into heaven. He said that he who did not forsake
everything--house, children, lands--to follow him could not be his
disciple. He told his hearers the parable of the rich man who did
nothing bad except that he--like our rich men--clothed himself in costly
apparel and fed himself on savory food and drink, and who plunged his
soul into perdition by this alone, and of the poor Lazarus who did
nothing good and who entered into the Kingdom of Heaven only because he
was a beggar."[1114]
2. But what form can such a distribution of goods take in detail?
This is best shown us by "the Russian colonists. These colonists arrive
on the soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into
his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can
have any right to it; on the contrary, the colonists regard the ground
_a priori_ as common property, and consider it altogether justifiable
that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields,
for starting gardens, and for building houses, they procure implements;
and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of
themselves produce any income--on the contrary, the colonists look upon
any profit from the means of labor, any interest for grain lent, etc.,
as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or
with means borrowed free of interest, either each for himself or all
together on joint account."[1115]
"In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only
describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking
place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's
natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstances or other. I
am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men
settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and
do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form
a labor company."[1116] But, in individual business as well as in
collective industry, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments
nor the plow can belong to anybody save him who drinks the water, wears
the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only
to him who puts them to use."[1117] One can call "only his labor his
own";[1118] by it one has as much as one needs.[1119]
6.--REALIZATION
_The way in which the change required by love is to take place,
according to Tolstoi, is that those men who have learned to know the
truth are to convince as many others as possible how necessary the
change is for love's sake, and that they, with the help of the refusal
of obedience, are to abolish law, the State, and property, and bring
about the new condition._
I. The prime necessity is that the men who have learned to know the
truth should convince as many others as possible that love demands the
change.
1. "That an order of life corresponding to our knowledge may take the
place of the order contrary to it, the present antiquated public opinion
must first be replaced by a new and living one."[1120]
It is not deeds of all sorts that bring to pass the grandest and most
significant changes in the life of humanity, "neither the fitting out
of armies a million strong nor the construction of roads and engines,
neither the organization of expositions nor the formation of
trade-unions, neither revolutions, barricades, and explosions nor
inventions in aerial navigation--but the changes of public opinion, and
these alone."[1121] Liberation is possible only "by a change in our
conception of life";[1122] "everything depends on the force with which
each individual man becomes conscious of Christian truth";[1123] "know
the truth and the truth shall make you free."[1124] Our liberation must
necessarily take place by "the Christian's recognizing the law of love,
which his Master has revealed to him, as entirely sufficient for all
human relations, and his perceiving the superfluousness and
illegitimateness of all violence."[1125]
The bringing about of this revolution in public opinion is in the hands
of the men who have learned to know the truth.[1126] "A public opinion
does not need hundreds and thousands of years to arise and spread; it
has the quality of working by contagion and swiftly seizing a great
number of men."[1127] "As a jarring touch is enough to change a fluid
saturated with salts to crystals in a moment, so now the slightest
effort may perhaps suffice to cause the unveiled truth to seize upon
hundreds, thousands, millions of men so that a public opinion
corresponding to knowledge shall be established and that hereby the
whole order of life shall become other than it is. It is in our hands
to make this effort."[1128]
2. The best means for bringing about the necessary revolution in public
opinion is that the men who have learned to know the truth should
testify to it by deed.
"The Christian knows the truth only in order to testify to it before
those who do not know it,"[1129] and that "by deed."[1130] "The truth is
imparted to men by deeds of truth, deeds of truth illuminate every man's
conscience, and thus destroy the force of deceit."[1131] Hence you ought
properly, "if you are a landlord, to give your land at once to the poor,
and, if you are a capitalist, to give your money or your factory to the
workingmen; if you are a prince, a cabinet minister, an official, a
judge, or a general, you ought at once to resign your position, and, if
you are a soldier, you ought to refuse obedience without regard to any
danger."[1132] But, to be sure, "it is very probable that you are not
strong enough to do this; you have connections, dependents,
subordinates, superiors, the temptations are powerful, and your force
gives out."[1133]
3. But there is still another means, though a less effective one, for
bringing about the necessary revolution in public opinion, and this "you
can always"[1134] employ. It is that the men who have learned to know
the truth should "speak it out frankly."[1135]
"If men--yes, if even a few men--would do this, the antiquated public
opinion would at once fall of itself, and a new, living, present-day one
would arise."[1136] "Not billions of rubles, not millions of soldiers,
no institutions, wars, or revolutions, have so much power as the simple
declaration of a free man that he considers something to be right or
wrong. If a free man speaks out honestly what he thinks and feels, in
the midst of thousands who in word and act stand for the very contrary,
one might think he must remain isolated. But usually it is otherwise;
all, or most, have long been privately thinking and feeling in the same
way; and then what to-day is still an individual's new opinion will
perhaps to-morrow be already the general opinion of the majority."[1137]
"If we would only stop lying and acting as if we did not see the truth,
if we would only testify to the truth that summons us and boldly confess
it, it would at once turn out that there are hundreds, thousands,
millions, of men in the same situation as ourselves, that they see the
truth like us, are afraid like us of remaining isolated if they confess
it, and are only waiting, like us, for the rest to testify to it."[1138]
II. To bring about the change and put the new condition in the place of
law, the State, and property, it is further requisite that the men who
have learned to know the truth should conform their lives to their
knowledge, and, in particular, that they should refuse obedience to the
State.
1. Men are to bring about the change themselves. They are "no longer to
wait for somebody to come and help them, be it Christ in the clouds with
the sound of the trumpet, be it a historic law or a differential or
integral law of forces. Nobody will help us if we do not help
ourselves."[1139]
"I have been told a story that happened to a courageous commissary of
police. He came into a village where they had applied for soldiers on
account of an outbreak among the peasants. In the spirit of Nicholas the
First he proposed to make an end of the rising by his personal presence
alone. He had a few cart-loads of sticks brought, gathered all the
peasants in a barn, and shut himself in with them. By his shouts he
succeeded in so cowing the peasants that they obeyed him and began to
beat each other at his command. So they beat each other till there was
found a simple-minded peasant who did not obey, and who called out to
his fellows that they should not beat each other either. Only then did
the beating cease, and the official made haste to get away. The advice
of this simple-minded peasant" should be followed by the men of our
time.[1140]
2. But it is not by violence that men are to bring about the change.
"Revolutionary enemies fight the government from outside; Christianity
does not fight at all, but wrecks its foundations from within."[1141]
"Some assert that liberation from force, or at least its diminution, can
be effected by the oppressed men's forcibly shaking off the oppressing
government; and many do in fact undertake to act on this doctrine. But
they deceive themselves and others: their activity only enhances the
despotism of governments, and the attempts at liberation are welcomed by
the governments as pretexts for strengthening their power."[1142]
However, suppose that by the favor of circumstances (as, for instance,
in France in 1870) they succeed in overthrowing a government, the party
which had won by force would be compelled, "in order to remain at the
helm and introduce its order into life, not only to employ all existing
violent methods, but to invent new ones in addition. It would be other
men that would be enslaved, and they would be coerced into other things,
but there would exist not merely the same but a still more cruel
condition of violence and enslavement; for the combat would have fanned
the flames of hatred, strengthened the means of enslavement, and evolved
new ones. Thus it has been after all revolutions, insurrections, and
conspiracies, after all violent changes of government. Every fight only
puts stronger means of enslavement in the hands of the men who at a
given time are in power."[1143]
3. Men are to bring about the change by conforming their lives to their
knowledge. "The Christian frees himself from all human authority by
recognizing as sole plumb-line for his life and the lives of others the
divine law of love that is implanted in man's soul and has been brought
into consciousness by Christ."[1144]
This means that one is to return good for evil,[1145] give to one's
neighbor all that one has that is superfluous and take away from him
nothing that one does not need,[1146] especially acquire no money and
get rid of the money one has,[1147] not buy nor rent,[1148] and, without
shrinking from any form of work, satisfy one's needs with one's own
hands;[1149] and particularly does it mean that one is to refuse
obedience to the unchristian demands of State authority.[1150]
That obedience to these demands is refused we see in many cases in
Russia at present. Men are refusing the payment of taxes, the general
oath, the oath in court, the exercise of police functions, action as
jurymen, and military service.[1151] "The governments find themselves in
a desperate situation as they face the Christians' refusals."[1152] They
"can chastise, put to death, imprison for life, and torture, any one who
tries to overthrow them by force; they can bribe and smother with gold
the half of mankind; they can bring into their service millions of armed
men who are ready to annihilate all their foes. But what can they do
against men who do not destroy anything, do not set up anything either,
but only, each for himself, are unwilling to act contrary to the law of
Christ, and therefore refuse to do what is most necessary for the
governments?"[1153] "Let the State do as it will by such men, inevitably
it will contribute only to its own annihilation,"[1154] and therewith to
the annihilation of law and property and to the bringing in of the new
order of life. "For, if it does not persecute people like the Dukhobors,
the Stundists, etc., the advantages of their peaceable Christian way of
living will induce others to join them--and not only convinced
Christians, but also such as want to get clear of their obligations to
the State under the cloak of Christianity. If, on the other hand, it
deals cruelly with men against whom there is nothing except that they
have endeavored to live morally, this cruelty will only make it still
more enemies, and the moment must at last come when there can no longer
be found any one who is ready to back up the State with
instrumentalities of force."[1155]
4. In the conforming of life to knowledge the individual must make the
beginning. He must not wait for all or many to do it at the same time
with him.
The individual must not think it will be useless if he alone conforms
his life to Christ's teaching.[1156] "Men in their present situation are
like bees that have left their hive and are hanging on a twig in a great
mass. The situation of the bees on the twig is a temporary one, and
absolutely must be changed. They must take flight and seek a new abode.
Every bee knows that, and wishes to make an end of its own suffering
condition and that of the others; but this cannot be done by one so long
as the others do not help. But all cannot rise at once, for one hangs
over another and hinders it from letting go; therefore all remain
hanging. One might think that there was no way out of this situation for
the bees";[1157] if and really there would be none, were it not that
each bee is an independent living being. But it is only needful "that
one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the
third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become
a freely flying swarm of bees. Thus it is only needful that one man
comprehend life as Christianity teaches it, and take hold of it as
Christianity teaches him to, and then that a second, a third, a
hundredth follow him, and the magic circle from which no escape seemed
possible is destroyed."[1158]
Neither may the individual let himself be deterred by the fear of
suffering. "'If I alone,' it is commonly said, 'fulfil Christ's teaching
in the midst of a world that does not follow it, give away my
belongings, turn my cheek without resistance, yes, and refuse the oath
and military service, then I shall have the last bit taken from me, and,
if I do not die of hunger, they will beat me to death, and, if they do
not beat me to death, they will jail me or shoot me; and I shall have
given all the happiness of my life, nay, my life itself, for
nothing.'"[1159] Be it so. "I do not ask whether I shall have more
trouble, or die sooner, if I follow Christ's teaching. That question can
be asked only by one who does not see how meaningless and miserable is
his life as an individual life, and who imagines that he shall 'not
die'. But I know that a life for the sake of one's own happiness is the
greatest folly, and that such an aimless life can be followed only by an
aimless death. And therefore I fear nothing. I shall die like everybody,
like even those who do not fulfil Christ's teaching, but my life and my
death will have a meaning for me and for others. My life and my death
will contribute to the rescue and life of others--and that is just what
Christ taught."[1160]
If once enough individuals have conformed their lives to their
knowledge, the multitude will soon follow. "The passage of men from one
order of life to another does not take place steadily, as the sand in
the hour-glass runs out, one grain after another from the first to the
last, but rather as a vessel that has been sunk into water fills itself.
At first the water gets in only on one side, slowly and uniformly; but
then its weight makes the vessel sink, and now the thing takes in, all
at once, all the water that it can hold."[1161] Thus the impulse given
by individuals will provoke a movement that goes on faster and faster,
wider and wider, avalanche-like, suddenly sweeps along the masses, and
brings about the new order of life.[1162] Then the time is come "when
all men are filled with God, shun war, beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning-hooks; that is, in our language, when the
prisons and fortresses are empty, when the gallows, rifles, and cannon
are out of use. What seemed a dream has found its fulfilment in a new
form of life."[1163]
FOOTNOTES:
[859] To. "Kingdom" pp. 244-5, 280, 315, 325.
[860] _Ib._ pp. 263, 285-6, To. "Gospel" p. 25, "Religion and Morality"
p. 14.
[861] To. "What I Believe" p. 251.
[862] To. "Gospel" pp. 13-14, 16-17.
[863] To. "Kingdom" p. 96-7.
[864] To. "What I Believe" pp. 247-8.
[865] To. "Reason and Dogma" p. 5.
[866] To. "What I Believe" p. 196.
[867] To. "Gospel" pp. 51, 29-30.
[868] _Ib._ p. 47.
[869] To. "Patriotism" p. 118.
[870] To. "Gospel" p. 29.
[871] To. "Gospel" p. 50; To. "Religion and Morality" p. 27.
[872] To. "On Life" p. 214.
[873] To. "Gospel" p. 31.
[874] _Ib._ pp. 32, 31, 40, 112.
[875] To. "What I Believe" p. 164.
[876] To. "Gospel" p. 21.
[877] _Ib._ p. 21.
[878] To. "What I Believe" pp. 160, 174.
[879] _Ib._ p. 166.
[880] To. "Confession" p. 92.
[881] To. "Kingdom" pp. 75-7, 79.
[882] To. "What I Believe" pp. 195, 272, "Kingdom" pp. 72-3, "Gospel" p.
5.
[883] To. "Kingdom" p. 234.
[884] To. "On Life" p. 48.
[885] _Ib._ pp. 72, 66.
[886] To. "Confession" p. 54.
[887] To. "On Life" p. 101.
[888] _Ib._ p. 100.
[889] _Ib._ p. 100.
[890] _Ib._ pp. 160, 101.
[891] _Ib._ pp. 160, 101.
[892] _Ib._ pp. 262-3.
[893] To. "On Life" p. 263.
[894] _Ib._ p. 263.
[895] To. "Religion and Morality" pp. 21-2.
[896] To. "Kingdom" p. 71.
[897] To. "Gospel" p. 25.
[898] _Ib._ p. 25.
[899] To. "What I Believe" pp. 138-9
[900] _Ib._ p. 268.
[901] _Ib._ p. 148.
[902] To. "On Life" pp. 159-60.
[903] _Ib._ p. 165.
[904] _Ib._ p. 164.
[905] _Ib._ pp. 170-71.
[906] To. "Kingdom" p. 140.
[907] _Ib._ p. 139.
[908] _Ib._ p. 138.
[909] To. "Kingdom" p. 142, "What I Believe" p. 17.
[910] To. "Kingdom" p. 123.
[911] To. "Religion and Morality" p. 12.
[912] To. "Kingdom" pp. 124-5.
[913] To. "Morning" pp. 70-71.
[914] To. "On Life" p. 148.
[915] _Ib._ pp. 147, 148.
[916] _Ib._ pp. 122, 133-5, 174, 176.
[917] _Ib._ pp. 121, 174.
[918] To. "On Life" pp. 26, 122-3, 196, 206.
[919] To. "What I Believe" p. 17.
[920] To. "Kingdom" p. 144.
[921] _Ib._ pp. 142-3.
[922] _Ib._ p. 160.
[923] _Ib._ p. 144.
[924] To. "What I Believe" p. 122.
[925] _Ib._ p. 123.
[926] _Ib._ p. 123.
[927] _Ib._ p. 123.
[928] _Ib._ p. 123.
[929] To. "What I Believe" p. 12.
[930] _Ib._ p. 12.
[931] _Ib._ p. 15.
[932] _Ib._ pp. 21-2.
[933] _Ib._ p. 22.
[934] To. "Kingdom" pp. 68-9.
[935] To. "Kingdom" pp. 269-70.
[936] _Ib._ p. 282.
[937] _Ib._ p. 63.
[938] To. "What I Believe" pp. 17, 20; "Kingdom" p. 268. [Has Tolstoi
compared in a Greek concordance the other occurrences of the word
translated "resist"?]
[939] To. "Kingdom" pp. 49-50.
[940] _Ib._ p. 50.
[941] To. "Kingdom" pp. 268-9.
[942] _Ib._ p. 269.
[943] ["He speaks only of the _Gesetz_, but he means all _Recht_"; see
footnote on page 145 of the present book.]
[944] To. "Kingdom" pp. 268, 300-301.
[945] _Ib._ pp. 361-2.
[946] To. "What I Believe" pp. 29, 32.
[947] To. "Kingdom" pp. 361-2, 172.
[948] _Ib._ p. 172.
[949] _Ib._ p. 300.
[950] _Ib._ p. 361.
[951] _Ib._ p. 241.
[952] _Ib._ p. 240.
[953] _Ib._ p. 256.
[954] To. "What I Believe" p. 29.
[955] _Ib._ pp. 28-9.
[956] _Ib._ p. 32.
[957] _Ib._ p. 32.
[958] _Ib._ pp. 45-6.
[959] _Ib._ p. 29.
[960] To. "Kingdom" pp. 361-2.
[961] _Ib._ p. 172.
[962] _Ib._ p. 268.
[963] _Ib._ p. 172.
[964] To. "What I Believe" p. 120.
[965] _Ib._ pp. 180, 235.
[966] _Ib._ pp. 235, 180.
[967] To. "Kingdom" p. 393, "What I Believe" p. 121.
[968] To. "Kingdom" pp. 393-4.
[969] _Ib._ pp. 486-7.
[970] To. "Persecutions" p. 47.
[971] To. "Gospel" p. 50.
[972] To. "Kingdom" p. 526.
[973] To. "What I Believe" p. 121.
[974] To. "Kingdom" pp. 142-3, 144.
[975] To. "What I Believe" pp. 122-3, 179, 124, 219-20; "Gospel" pp.
59-60; "Kingdom" pp. 143-4.
[976] To. "What I Believe" p. 225.
[977] _Ib._ p. 225.
[978] _Ib._ p. 121.
[979] To. "Kingdom" pp. 240-41.
[980] _Ib._ p. 336.
[981] _Ib._ pp. 335-6.
[982] _Ib._ p. 332.
[983] _Ib._ p. 211.
[984] To. "What I Believe" p. 21; "Persecutions" p. 46.
[985] To. "Kingdom" pp. 209-10.
[986] _Ib._ pp. 167, 164.
[987] To. "What I Believe" p. 25.
[988] To. "Kingdom" p. 332.
[989] To. "What I Believe" p. 50.
[990] To. "Kingdom" pp. 429-30, 244.
[991] _Ib._ pp. 209-10.
[992] _Ib._ p. 274.
[993] _Ib._ pp. 271-2.
[994] To. "Kingdom" p. 271.
[995] _Ib._ pp. 341, 339.
[996] _Ib._ p. 340.
[997] _Ib._ p. 340.
[998] _Ib._ p. 339.
[999] To. "Kingdom" pp. 339-40.
[1000] _Ib._ p. 342.
[1001] _Ib._ p. 243.
[1002] To. "Patriotism" p. 91.
[1003] To. "Kingdom" p. 239.
[1004] _Ib._ p. 243.
[1005] To. "Kingdom" p. 281.
[1006] _Ib._ p. 442.
[1007] _Ib._ p. 442.
[1008] To. "Persecutions" p. 41.
[1009] To. "Kingdom" p. 327.
[1010] _Ib._ p. 238.
[1011] To. "Patriotism" p. 120.
[1012] To. "Kingdom" p. 443.
[1013] To. "Patriotism" p. 119.
[1014] To. "Kingdom" p. 238.
[1015] To. "Kingdom" pp. 248-9.
[1016] To. "Patriotism" p. 91.
[1017] To. "Kingdom" p. 249.
[1018] _Ib._ p. 245.
[1019] To. "Kingdom" p. 246-7.
[1020] _Ib._ pp. 250, 423-4.
[1021] _Ib._ pp. 314-28.
[1022] To. "What I Believe" pp. 26-7.
[1023] To. "Kingdom" p. 274.
[1024] _Ib._ p. 276.
[1025] _Ib._ p. 422.
[1026] _Ib._ p. 277.
[1027] _Ib._ p. 276.
[1028] To. "Patriotism" pp. 40-41, 100-102; "Kingdom" pp. 429-32.
[1029] To. "Kingdom" p. 275.
[1030] To. "Kingdom" p. 422.
[1031] _Ib._ pp. 275-6, 420-22, 444-5.
[1032] _Ib._ p. 278.
[1033] _Ib._ p. 278.
[1034] _Ib._ p. 279.
[1035] _Ib._ p. 279.
[1036] To. "Kingdom" p. 511; "Patriotism" p. 117.
[1037] To. "Kingdom" p. 189.
[1038] To. "What I Believe" p. 123.
[1039] To. "Kingdom" pp. 143-4.
[1040] _Ib._ pp. 300-301.
[1041] _Ib._ p. 300.
[1042] _Ib._ p. 301.
[1043] _Ib._ p. 301.
[1044] _Ib._ p. 236.
[1045] _Ib._ p. 461.
[1046] To. "Kingdom" p. 461.
[1047] _Ib._ pp. 461-2.
[1048] _Ib._ p. 461.
[1049] _Ib._ p. 255.
[1050] _Ib._ p. 255.
[1051] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255-6.
[1052] To. "What I Believe" p. 290.
[1053] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255, 258.
[1054] _Ib._ p. 258.
[1055] To. "What I Believe" p. 289.
[1056] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255, 257.
[1057] _Ib._ p. 257.
[1058] _Ib._ p. 510.
[1059] To. "Persecutions" pp. 46-7.
[1060] To. "Kingdom" p. 372.
[1061] To. "Kingdom" p. 510.
[1062] _Ib._ p. 512.
[1063] _Ib._ pp. 513-14.
[1064] To. "Kingdom" pp. 372-3.
[1065] _Ib._ p. 518.
[1066] _Ib._ p. 256.
[1067] _Ib._ p. 164.
[1068] _Ib._ p. 376.
[1069] To. "What I Believe" p. 21; "What Shall We Do" pp. 157-8.
[1070] To. "Kingdom" pp. 167, 164.
[1071] _Ib._ p. 273.
[1072] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 19.
[1073] _Ib._ pp. 18-19.
[1074] _Ib._ p. 19.
[1075] To. "Money" p. 18.
[1076] To. "Linen-Measurer" pp. 602-3.
[1077] To. "Kingdom" p. 164.
[1078] _Ib._ p. 168.
[1079] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 143.
[1080] To. "Money" p. 18.
[1081] _Ib._ p. 13.
[1082] _Ib._ p. 13.
[1083] _Ib._ p. 16.
[1084] _Ib._ p. 15.
[1085] To. "Kingdom" p. 166.
[1086] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 139.
[1087] _Ib._ p. 152.
[1088] To. "Money" p. 6.
[1089] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 151-2.
[1090] _Ib._ p. 160.
[1091] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 134-5.
[1092] _Ib._ p. 135.
[1093] To. "Kingdom" pp. 247-8.
[1094] _Ib._ p. 406.
[1095] _Ib._ p. 407.
[1096] _Ib._ p. 407.
[1097] _Ib._ p. 409.
[1098] _Ib._ p. 492.
[1099] _Ib._ pp. 247, 447.
[1100] To. "Kingdom" pp. 492-3.
[1101] _Ib._ pp. 314-28.
[1102] _Ib._ pp. 424-5.
[1103] _Ib._ p. 425.
[1104] _Ib._ p. 425.
[1105] To. "Kingdom" p. 511.
[1106] To. "What I Believe" p. 249.
[1107] _Ib._ p. 249.
[1108] _Ib._ p. 228.
[1109] _Ib._ pp. 227-8.
[1110] _Ib._ p. 227.
[1111] _Ib._ p. 229.
[1112] To. "What I Believe" p. 230.
[1113] To. "Kingdom" p. 520.
[1114] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 157-8.
[1115] To. "Money" p. 10.
[1116] To. "Money" p. 11.
[1117] _Ib._ pp. 11-12.
[1118] "Kernel" p. 89.
[1119] _Ib._ p. 89.
[1120] "Patriotism" p. 116.
[1121] To. "Patriotism" pp. 108-9.
[1122] To. "Kingdom" p. 301.
[1123] _Ib._ p. 474.
[1124] _Ib._ p. 302.
[1125] _Ib._ p. 301.
[1126] To. "Patriotism" pp. 116-17.
[1127] To. "Kingdom" p. 358.
[1128] To. "Kingdom" p. 508.
[1129] To. "What I Believe" p. 290.
[1130] _Ib._ p. 290.
[1131] _Ib._ p. 293.
[1132] To. "Kingdom" p. 523.
[1133] _Ib._ p. 523.
[1134] _Ib._ p. 523.
[1135] To. "Patriotism" p. 116.
[1136] _Ib._ p. 109.
[1137] To. "Patriotism" pp. 112-13.
[1138] To. "Kingdom" p. 509.
[1139] To. "What I Believe" pp. 147-8.
[1140] To. "Kingdom" pp. 306-7.
[1141] _Ib._ p. 326.
[1142] _Ib._ pp. 279-80.
[1143] To. "Kingdom" pp. 280-81.
[1144] _Ib._ p. 298.
[1145] To. "What I Believe" p. 292.
[1146] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 164; "What I Believe" p. 291.
[1147] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 162.
[1148] _Ib._ p. 161.
[1149] To "What Shall We Do" p. 161.
[1150] To. "Kingdom" p. 314.
[1151] _Ib._ pp. 327-8.
[1152] _Ib._ p. 330.
[1153] _Ib._ p. 328.
[1154] To. "Persecutions" p. 44.
[1155] To. "Persecutions" p. 44.
[1156] To. "Kingdom" p. 293.
[1157] _Ib._ pp. 302-3.
[1158] To. "Kingdom" pp. 303-4.
[1159] "What I Believe" p. 148.
[1160] _Ib._ pp. 179-80.
[1161] To. "Kingdom" p. 353.
[1162] _Ib._ p. 356.
[1163] _Ib._ p. 392.