Now I will speak of another putative comprehension of Christianity,
which interferes with the correct comprehension of it,--the
scientific comprehension.
The churchmen regard as Christianity that conception of it which
they have formed, and this comprehension of Christianity they regard
as the one indubitably true one.
The men of science regard as Christianity only what the different
churches have been professing, and, assuming that these professions
exhaust the whole significance of Christianity, they recognize it as
a religious teaching which has outlived its time.
To have it made clear how impossible it is with such a view to
understand the Christian teaching, we must form an idea of the place
which the religions in general and Christianity in particular have
in reality occupied in the life of humanity, and of the significance
which is ascribed to religion by science.
As an individual man cannot live without having a definite idea of
the meaning of his life, and always, though often unconsciously,
conforms his acts to this meaning which he ascribes to his life,
even so aggregates of men living under the same conditions,--nations
cannot help but have a conception about the meaning of their
collective life and the activity resulting therefrom. And as
an individual, entering into a new age, invariably changes his
comprehension of life, and a grown man sees its meaning in something
else than in what a child sees it, so an aggregate of people, a
nation, inevitably, according to its age, changes its comprehension
of life and the activity which results from it.
The difference between the individual and the whole of humanity in
this respect consists in this, that while the individual in the
determination of the comprehension of life, proper to the new stage
of life into which he enters, and in the activity which arises from
it, makes use of the indications of men who have lived before him
and who have already passed through the period of life upon which
he is entering, humanity cannot have these indications, because it
all moves along an untrodden path, and there is no one who can tell
how life is to be understood, and how one is to act under the new
conditions into which it is entering, and in which no one has lived
before.
And yet, as a married man with children cannot continue to
understand life as he understood it when he was a child, so
humanity cannot in connection with all the various changes
which have taken place,--the density of the population, and the
established intercourse between the nations, and the improvement of
the means for struggling against Nature, and the accumulation of
science,--continue to understand life as before, but must establish
a new concept of life, from which should result the activity which
corresponds to that new condition into which it has entered or is
about to enter.
To this demand responds the peculiar ability of humanity to
segregate certain people who give a new meaning to the whole of
human life,--a meaning from which results the whole new activity
which is different from the preceding one. The establishment of the
new life-conception, which is proper for humanity under the new
conditions into which it is entering, and of the activity resulting
from it, is what is called religion.
And so religion, in the first place, is not, as science thinks, a
phenomenon which at one time accompanied the evolution of humanity,
and later became obsolete, but is a phenomenon always inherent in
the life of humanity, and is in our time as inevitably inherent in
humanity as at any other time. In the second place, religion is
always a determination of the activity of the future, and not of the
past, and so it is obvious that the investigation of past phenomena
can in no way include the essence of religion.
The essence of every religious teaching does not consist in the
desire to express the forces of Nature symbolically, or in the fear
of them, or in the demand for the miraculous, or in the external
forms of its manifestation, as the men of science imagine. The
essence of religion lies in the property of men prophetically to
foresee and point out the path of life, over which humanity must
travel, in a new definition of the meaning of life, from which also
results a new, the whole future activity of humanity.
This property of foreseeing the path on which humanity must travel
is in a greater or lesser degree common to all men, but there have
always, at all times, been men, in whom this quality has been
manifested with particular force, and these men expressed clearly
and precisely what was dimly felt by all men, and established a new
comprehension of life, from which resulted an entirely new activity,
for hundreds and thousands of years.
We know three such conceptions of life: two of them humanity has
already outlived, and the third is the one through which we are
now passing in Christianity. There are three, and only three, such
conceptions, not because we have arbitrarily united all kinds of
life-conceptions into these three, but because the acts of men
always have for their base one of these three life-conceptions,
because we cannot understand life in any other way than by one of
these three means.
The three life-conceptions are these: the first--the personal, or
animal; the second--the social, or the pagan; and the third--the
universal, or the divine.
According to the first life-conception, man's life is contained
in nothing but his personality; the aim of his life is the
gratification of the will of this personality. According to
the second life-conception, man's life is not contained in
his personality alone, but in the aggregate and sequence of
personalities,--in the tribe, the family, the race, the state;
the aim of life consists in the gratification of the will of this
aggregate of personalities. According to the third life-conception,
man's life is contained neither in his personality, nor in the
aggregate and sequence of personalities, but in the beginning and
source of life, in God.
These three life-conceptions serve as the foundation of all past and
present religions.
The savage recognizes life only in himself, in his personal desires.
The good of his life is centred in himself alone. The highest
good for him is the greatest gratification of his lust. The prime
mover of his life is his personal enjoyment. His religion consists
in appeasing the divinity in his favour, and in the worship of
imaginary personalities of gods, who live only for personal ends.
A pagan, a social man, no longer recognizes life in himself alone,
but in the aggregate of personalities,--in the tribe, the family,
the race, the state,--and sacrifices his personal good for these
aggregates. The prime mover of his life is glory. His religion
consists in the glorification of the heads of unions,--of eponyms,
ancestors, kings, and in the worship of gods, the exclusive
protectors of his family, his race, his nation, his state.[9]
[9] The unity of this life-conception is not impaired by the
fact that so many various forms of life, as that of the tribe,
the family, the race, the state, and even the life of humanity,
according to the theoretical speculations of the positivists, are
based on this social, or pagan, life-conception. All these various
forms of life are based on the same concept that the life of the
personality is not a sufficient aim of life and that the meaning of
life can be found only in the aggregate of personalities.--_Author's
Note._
The man with the divine life-conception no longer recognizes life to
consist in his personality, or in the aggregate of personalities (in
the family, the race, the people, the country, or the state), but
in the source of the everlasting, immortal life, in God; and to do
God's will he sacrifices his personal and domestic and social good.
The prime mover of his religion is love. And his religion is the
worship in deed and in truth of the beginning of everything, of God.
The whole historical life of humanity is nothing but a gradual
transition from the personal, the animal life-conception, to the
social, and from the social to the divine. The whole history of the
ancient nations, which lasted for thousands of years and which came
to a conclusion with the history of Rome, is the history of the
substitution of the social and the political life-conception for the
animal, the personal. The whole history since the time of imperial
Rome and the appearance of Christianity has been the history of the
substitution of the divine life-conception for the political, and we
are passing through it even now.
It is this last life-conception, and the Christian teaching which
is based upon it and which governs our whole life and lies at
the foundation of our whole activity, both the practical and the
theoretical, that the men of so-called science, considering it
in reference to its external signs only, recognize as something
obsolete and meaningless for us.
This teaching, which, according to the men of science, is contained
only in its dogmatic part,--in the doctrine of the Trinity, the
redemption, the miracles, the church, the sacraments, and so
forth,--is only one out of a vast number of religions which have
arisen in humanity, and now, having played its part in history, is
outliving its usefulness, melting in the light of science and true
culture.
What is taking place is what in the majority of cases serves as
a source of the coarsest human errors,--men who are standing on a
lower level of comprehension, coming in contact with phenomena of a
higher order, instead of making efforts to understand them, instead
of rising to the point of view from which they ought to look upon
a subject, judge it from their lower point of view, and that, too,
with greater daring and determination the less they understand what
they are talking about.
For the majority of scientific men, who view Christ's vital,
moral teaching from the lower point of the social conception of
life, this teaching is only a very indefinite, clumsy combination
of Hindoo asceticism, Stoical and Neo-platonic teachings, and
Utopian antisocial reveries, which have no serious significance
for our time, and its whole meaning is centred in its external
manifestations,--in Catholicism, Protestantism, the dogmas, the
struggle with the worldly power. In defining the significance of
Christianity according to these phenomena, they are like deaf
persons who should judge of the meaning and the worth of music
according to the appearance of the motions which the musicians make.
The result of it is this, that all these men, beginning with Comte,
Strauss, Spencer, and Renan, who do not understand the meaning of
Christ's sermons, who do not understand why they are uttered and
for what purpose, who do not even understand the question to which
they serve as an answer, who do not even take the trouble to grasp
their meaning, if they are inimically inclined, deny outright the
rationality of the teaching; but if they wish to be condescending to
it, they correct it from the height of their grandeur, assuming that
Christ wanted to say precisely what they have in mind, but did not
know how to say it. They treat his teaching as, in correcting the
words of an interlocutor, self-confident men generally speak to one
whom they regard as standing below them, "Yes, what you mean to say
is this." This correction is always made in the sense of reducing
the higher, divine life-conception to the lower, social conception.
People generally say that the moral teaching of Christianity is
good, but exaggerated,--that, in order that it should be absolutely
good, we must reject from it what is superfluous, what does not fit
in with our structure of life. "For otherwise the teaching, which
demands too much, which cannot be carried out, is worse than one
which demands from men what is possible and in conformity with their
strength," think and assert the wise interpreters of Christianity,
repeating what was long ago affirmed and still is affirmed, and
could not help but be affirmed, in relation to the Christian
teaching, by those who, having failed to comprehend the teacher of
it, crucified Him,--by the Jews.
It turns out that before the judgment of the learned of our time,
the Jewish law, A tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye,--the
law of just retaliation, which was known to humanity five thousand
years ago,--is more useful than the law of love which eighteen
hundred years ago was preached by Christ in place of this very law
of justice.
It turns out that everything which has been done by the men who
comprehended Christ's teaching in a direct manner and lived in
conformity with such a comprehension, everything which all true
Christians, all Christian champions, have done, everything which now
transforms the world under the guise of socialism and communism,--is
exaggeration, of which it is not worth while to speak.
Men who have been educated in Christianity for eighteen centuries
have convinced themselves in the persons of their foremost men,
the scholars, that the Christian teaching is a teaching of dogmas,
that the vital teaching is a misconception, an exaggeration, which
violates the true legitimate demands of morality, which correspond
to man's nature, and that the doctrine of justice, which Christ
rejected and in the place of which he put his own teaching, is much
more profitable for us.
The learned consider the commandment of non-resistance to evil an
exaggeration and even madness. If it be rejected, it would be much
better, they think, without observing that they are not talking of
Christ's teaching at all, but of what presents itself to them as
such.
They do not notice that to say that Christ's commandment about
non-resistance to evil is an exaggeration is the same as saying
that in the theory of the circle the statement about the equality
of the radii of a circle is an exaggeration. And those who say so
do precisely what a man, who did not have any conception as to
what a circle is, would do if he asserted that the demand that all
the points on the circumference should be equally distant from the
centre is an exaggeration. To advise that the statement concerning
the equality of the radii in a circle be rejected or moderated is
the same as not understanding what a circle is. To advise that the
commandment about non-resistance to evil in the vital teaching of
Christ be rejected or moderated means not to understand the teaching.
And those who do so actually do not understand it at all. They do
not understand that this teaching is the establishment of a new
comprehension of life, which corresponds to the new condition into
which men have been entering for these eighteen hundred years, and
the determination of the new activity which results from it. They
do not believe that Christ wanted to say what he did; or it seems
to them that what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other
passages He said from infatuation, from lack of comprehension, from
insufficient development.[10]
[10] Here, for example, is a characteristic judgment of the kind
in an article of an American periodical, _Arena_, October, 1890.
The article is entitled "A New Basis of Church Life." In discussing
the significance of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially its
non-resistance to evil, the author, who is not obliged, like the
ecclesiastic writers, to conceal its meaning, says: "Christ actually
preached complete communism and anarchy; but we must know how to
look upon Christ in His historical and psychologic significance."
[This sentence is not in the English article.--_Tr._] "Devout common
sense must gradually come to look upon Christ as a philanthropic
teacher who, like every enthusiast who ever taught, went to an
Utopian extreme of His own philosophy. Every great agitation for the
betterment of the world has been led by men who beheld their own
mission with such absorbing intensity that they could see little
else. It is no reproach to Christ to say that He had the typical
reformer's temperament; that His precepts cannot be literally
accepted as a complete philosophy of life; and that men are to
analyze them reverently, but, at the same time, in the spirit of
ordinary, truth-seeking criticism," and so forth. Christ would have
liked to speak well, but He did not know how to express Himself as
precisely and clearly as we, in the spirit of criticism, and so we
will correct him. Everything He said about meekness, sacrifice,
poverty, the thoughtlessness for the morrow, He said by chance,
having been unable to express himself scientifically.--_Author's
Note._
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye
shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do
they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking
thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought
for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What
shall we eat? or, What shall we drink, or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and
all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought
for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things
of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. vi.
25-34).
Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax
not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief
approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is
there will your heart be also (Luke xii. 33-34).
Go and sell that thou hast, and follow me, and who hath not forsaken
father or mother, or children, or brethren, or fields, or house,
cannot be my disciple.
Turn away from thyself, take thy cross for every day, and come after
me. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to do His
work. Not my will be done, but Thine; not what I want, but what Thou
wantest, and not as I want, but as Thou wantest. The life is in
this, not to do one's will, but the will of God.
All these propositions seem to men who are standing on a lower
life-conception to be an expression of an ecstatic transport, which
has no direct applicability to life. And yet these propositions
just as strictly result from the Christian conception of life as
the tenet about giving up one's labour for the common good, about
sacrificing one's life in the defence of one's country, results from
the social conception.
Just as a man of the social life-conception says to a savage, "Come
to your senses, bethink yourself! The life of your personality
cannot be the true life, because it is wretched and transitory. Only
the life of the aggregate and of the sequence of personalities,
of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, is continued and
lives, and so a man must sacrifice his personality for the life of
the family, the state." Precisely the same the Christian teaching
says to a man of the aggregate, of the social conception of life.
"Repent, μετανοεῖτε, that is, bethink yourselves, or
else you will perish. Remember that this carnal, personal life,
which originated to-day and will be destroyed to-morrow, cannot be
made secure in any way, that no external measures, no arrangement of
it, can add firmness and rationality to it. Bethink yourselves and
understand that the life which you live is not the true life: the
life of the family, the life of society, the life of the state will
not save you from ruin." The true, rational life is possible for man
only in proportion as he can be a participant, not in the family or
the state, but in the source of life, the Father; in proportion as
he can blend his life with the life of the Father. Such indubitably
is the Christian life-comprehension, which may be seen in every
utterance of the Gospel.
It is possible not to share this life-conception; it is possible to
reject it; it is possible to prove its inexactness and irregularity;
but it is impossible to judge of the teaching, without having
first grasped the life-conception from which it results; still
less possible is it to judge about a subject of a higher order
from a lower point of view, to judge of the tower by looking at
the foundation. But it is precisely this that the learned men of
our time are doing. They do so because they abide in an error,
which is like the one of the churchmen, the belief that they are
in possession of such methods of the study of the subject that, as
soon as these methods, called scientific, are used, there can be no
longer any doubt as to the correctness of the comprehension of the
subject under advisement.
It is this possession of an instrument of cognition, which
they deem infallible, that serves as the chief obstacle in the
comprehension of the Christian teaching by unbelievers and so-called
scientific men, by whose opinion the vast majority of unbelievers,
the so-called cultured men, are guided. From this imaginary
comprehension of theirs arise all the errors of the scientific
men in respect to the Christian teaching, and especially two
strange misconceptions which more than any other impede the correct
comprehension of it.
One of these misconceptions is this, that the Christian vital
teaching is impracticable, and so is either entirely unobligatory,
that is, need not be taken for a guide, or else must be modified
and moderated to such an extent as to make it practicable in our
society. Another misunderstanding is this, that the Christian
teaching of love of God, and so the service of Him, is an obscure,
mystical demand, which has no definite object of love, and so must
give way to a more precise and comprehensible teaching about loving
men and serving humanity.
The first misconception about the impracticableness of the teaching
consists in this, that the men of the social comprehension of
life, being unable to comprehend the method by means of which the
Christian teaching guides men, and taking the Christian indications
of perfection to be rules which determine life, think and say that
it is impossible to follow Christ's teaching, because a complete
fulfilment of this teaching destroys life.
"If a man fulfilled what was preached by Christ, he would destroy
his life; and if all men should fulfil it, the whole human race
would come to an end," they say.
"If we care not for the morrow, for what we shall eat and drink and
be clothed in; if we do not defend our lives; if we do not resist
evil with force; if we give our lives for our friends, and observe
absolute chastity, no man, nor the whole human race, can exist,"
they think and say.
And they are quite correct, if we take the indications of
perfection, as given by Christ, for rules, which every man is
obliged to carry out, just as in the social teaching everybody is
obliged to carry out the rule about paying the taxes, about taking
part in court, etc.
The misconception consists in this, that Christ's teaching guides
men in a different way from the way those teachings guide which
are based on a lower life-conception. The teachings of the social
life-conception guide only by demanding a precise execution of the
rules or laws. Christ's teaching guides men by indicating to them
that infinite perfection of the Father in heaven, toward which it is
proper for each man to strive voluntarily, no matter at what stage
of perfection he may be.
The misconception of people who judge about the Christian teaching
from the social point of view consists in this, that they,
assuming that the perfection pointed out by Christ may be attained
completely, ask themselves (even as they question themselves,
assuming that the social laws will be fulfilled) what will happen
when all this shall be fulfilled. This assumption is false, because
the perfection pointed out by Christ is infinite and can never be
attained; and Christ gives His teaching with this in view, that
complete perfection will never be attained, but that the striving
toward complete, infinite perfection will constantly increase
the good of men, and that this good can, therefore, be increased
infinitely.
Christ does not teach angels, but men, who live an animal life,
who are moved by it. And it is to this animal force of motion that
Christ seems to apply a new, a different force of the consciousness
of divine perfection, and with this He directs the motion of life
along the resultant of two forces.
To assume that human life will go in the direction indicated by
Christ is the same as assuming that a boatman, in crossing a rapid
river and directing his boat almost against the current, will move
in that direction.
Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the parallelogram,
of both the eternal, indestructible forces, of which man's life
is composed,--the force of the animal nature and the force of the
consciousness of a filial relation to God. Without saying anything
of the animal force, which, asserting itself, always remains equal
to itself and exists outside of man's power, Christ speaks only of
the divine force, calling man to recognize it in the highest degree,
to free it as much as possible from what is retarding it, and to
bring it to the highest degree of tension.
In this liberation and increase of the force does man's true life,
according to Christ's teaching, consist. The true life, according
to the previous conditions, consisted in the execution of rules, of
the law; according to Christ's teaching, it consists in the greatest
approach to the divine perfection, as pointed out to every man and
inwardly felt by him, in a greater and ever greater approach toward
blending our will with the will of God, a blending toward which a
man strives, and which would be a destruction of life as we know it.
Divine perfection is the asymptote of the human life, toward which
it always tends and approaches, and which can be attained by it only
at infinity.
The Christian teaching seems to exclude the possibility of life only
when men take the indication of the ideal to be a rule. It is only
then that the demands put forth by Christ's teaching appear to be
destructive of life. Without these demands the true life would be
impossible.
"Too much should not be demanded," people generally say, in
discussing the demands of the Christian teaching. "It is impossible
to demand that we should not care for the future, as it says in
the Gospel; all that we should do is not to care too much. It is
impossible to give everything to the poor; but we should give a
certain, definite part to them. It is not necessary to strive after
chastity; but debauchery should be avoided. We must not leave our
wives and children; but we should not be too much attached to them,"
and so forth.
But to speak in this manner is the same as telling a man who is
crossing a rapid river, and who is directing his course against the
current, that it is impossible to cross the river by going against
the current, but that to cross it he should row in the direction he
wishes to go.
Christ's teaching differs from previous teachings in that it guides
men, not by external rules, but by the internal consciousness of
the possibility of attaining divine perfection. And in man's soul
there are not moderated rules of justice and of philanthropy, but
the ideal of the complete, infinite, divine perfection. Only the
striving after this perfection deflects the direction of man's life
from the animal condition toward the divine, to the extent to which
this is possible in this life.
In order to land where you wish, you must direct your course much
higher up.
To lower the demands of the ideal means not only to diminish the
possibility of perfection, but to destroy the ideal itself. The
ideal which operates upon people is not an invented one, but one
which is borne in the soul of every man. Only this ideal of the
complete, infinite perfection acts upon people and moves them to
activity. A moderated perfection loses its power to act upon men's
souls.
Christ's teaching only then has force, when it demands full
perfection, that is, the blending of God's essence, which abides in
the soul of every man, with the will of God,--the union of the son
and the Father. Only this liberation of the son of God, who lives in
every man, from the animal, and his approximation to the Father form
life according to Christ's teaching.
The existence of the animal in man, of nothing but the animal, is
not the human life. Life according to the will of God alone is also
not the human life. The human life is the resultant from the animal
and the divine lives, and the more this resultant approaches the
divine life, the more there is of life.
Life, according to the Christian teaching, is a motion toward
divine perfection. No condition, according to this teaching, can
be higher or lower than another. Every condition, according to this
teaching, is only a certain step, indifferent in itself, toward the
unattainable perfection, and so in itself forms neither a greater
nor a lesser degree of life. The increase of life, according to
this teaching, is only an acceleration of motion toward perfection,
and so the motion toward perfection of the publican Zacchæus, of
the harlot, of the robber on the cross, forms a higher degree of
life than the immovable righteousness of the Pharisee. And so there
can be no obligatory rules for this teaching. A man who stands on
a lower step, in moving toward perfection, lives more morally and
better, and better performs the teaching, than a man who stands
on a much higher stage of morality, but who does not move toward
perfection.
In this sense the lost sheep is dearer to the Father than one which
is not lost. The prodigal son, the lost coin which is found again,
are dearer than those which were not lost.
The fulfilment of the teaching consists in the motion from oneself
toward God. It is evident that for such a fulfilment of the teaching
there can be no definite laws and rules. All degrees of perfection
and all degrees of imperfection are equal before this teaching; no
fulfilment of the laws constitutes a fulfilment of the teaching; and
so, for this teaching there are, and there can be, no rules and no
laws.
From this radical distinction of Christ's teaching as compared
with previous teachings, which are based on the social conception
of life, there results the difference between the social and the
Christian commandments. The social commandments are for the most
part positive, prescribing certain acts, justifying men, giving
them righteousness. But the Christian commandments (the commandment
of love is not a commandment in the strict sense of the word, but
an expression of the very essence of the teaching)--the five
commandments of the Sermon on the Mount--are all negative, and
they all show only what men may not do at a certain stage of human
development. These commandments are, as it were, signals on the
infinite road to perfection, toward which humanity walks, signals of
that stage of perfection which is possible at a given period of the
development of humanity.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ has expressed the eternal ideal
toward which it is proper for men to tend, and that degree of its
attainment which can be reached even in our time.
The ideal consists in having no ill-will against any one, in calling
forth no ill-will, in loving all; but the commandment, below which,
in the attainment of this ideal, it is absolutely possible not to
descend, consists in not offending any one with a word. And this
forms the first commandment.
The ideal is complete chastity, even in thought; the commandment
which points out the degree of attainment, below which, in the
attainment of this ideal, it is absolutely possible not to descend,
is the purity of the marital life, the abstaining from fornication.
And this forms the second commandment.
The ideal is not to care for the future, to live only in the
present; the commandment which points out the degree of the
attainment, below which it is absolutely possible not to descend is
not to swear, not to promise anything to men. And this is the third
commandment.
The ideal is never, under any condition, to make use of violence;
the commandment which points out the degree below which it is
absolutely possible not to descend is not to repay evil with evil,
but to suffer insult, to give up one's cloak. And this is the fourth
commandment.
The ideal is to love our enemies, who hate us; the commandment which
points out the degree of the attainment, below which it is possible
not to descend, is to do no evil to our enemies, to speak well of
them, to make no distinction between them and our fellow citizens.
All these commandments are indications of what we are fully able not
to do on the path of striving after perfection, of what we ought to
work over now, of what we must by degrees transfer into the sphere
of habit, into the sphere of the unconscious. But these commandments
fail to form a teaching, and do not exhaust it, and form only one of
the endless steps in the approximation toward perfection.
After these commandments there must and will follow higher and
higher ones on the path to perfection, which is indicated by the
teaching.
And so it is the peculiarity of the Christian teaching that it makes
higher demands than those which are expressed in these commandments,
but under no condition minimizes the demands, either of the ideal
itself, or of these commandments, as is done by people who judge
the teaching of Christianity free from the standpoint of the social
conception of life.
Such is one misconception of the scientific men concerning the
meaning and significance of Christ's teaching; the other, which
flows from the same source, consists in the substitution of the love
and service of men, of humanity, for the Christian demand for loving
God and serving Him.
The Christian teaching of loving God and serving Him, and (only in
consequence of this love and this service) of the love and service
of our neighbour, appears obscure, mystical, and arbitrary to the
men of science, and they completely exclude the demand of love of
God and of serving Him, assuming that the teaching about this love
of men, of humanity, is much more intelligible and firm and better
grounded.
The men of science teach theoretically that the good and sensible
life is only the life of serving the whole of humanity, and in this
alone do they see the meaning of the Christian teaching; to this
teaching do they reduce the Christian teaching; for this their
teaching do they seek a confirmation in the Christian teaching,
assuming that their teaching and the Christian teaching are one and
the same.
This opinion is quite faulty. The Christian teaching, and that of
the positivists, communists, and all the preachers of a universal
brotherhood of men, which is based on the profitableness of such a
brotherhood, have nothing in common among themselves, and differ
from one another more especially in this, that the Christian
teaching has firm, clear foundations in the human soul, while the
teaching of the love of humanity is only a theoretical deduction
from analogy.
The teaching of the love of humanity alone has for its basis the
social conception of life.
The essence of the social conception of life consists in the
transference of the meaning of our personal lives into the life of
the aggregate of personalities,--the tribe, the family, the race,
the state. This transference has taken place easily and naturally in
its first forms, in the transference of the meaning of life from the
personality to the tribe, the family. But the transference to the
race or nation is more difficult and demands a special education for
it; and the transference of the consciousness to the state forms the
limit of such a transference.
It is natural for any one to love himself, and every person loves
himself without any special incitement; to love my tribe, which
supports and defends me, to love my wife, the joy and helpmate of my
life, my children, the pleasure and hope of my life, and my parents,
who have given me life and an education, is natural: and this kind
of love, though far from being as strong as the love of self, is met
with quite frequently.
To love one's race, one's nation, for the sake of oneself, of one's
pride, though not so natural, is still to be met with. The love of
one's nation, which is of the same race, tongue, and faith with
one, is still possible, though this sentiment is far from being as
strong as the love of self, or even of family and race; but the
love of a country, like Turkey, Germany, England, Austria, Russia,
is almost an impossible thing, and, in spite of the intensified
education in this direction, is only assumed and does not exist in
reality. With this aggregate there ends for man the possibility of
transferring his consciousness and of experiencing in this fiction
any immediate sensation. But the positivists and all the preachers
of a scientific brotherhood, who do not take into consideration the
weakening of the sentiment in proportion as the subject is widened,
continue the discussion theoretically along the same direction:
"If," they say, "it was more advantageous for the personality to
transfer its consciousness to the tribe, the family, and then to the
nation, the state, it will be still more advantageous to transfer
the consciousness to the whole aggregate of humanity, and for all
to live for humanity, just as individuals live for the family, the
state."
Theoretically it really comes out that way.
Since the consciousness and the love of personality are transferred
to the family, from the family to the race, the nation, the
state, it would be quite logical for men, to save themselves from
struggle and calamities, which are due to the division of humanity
into nations and states, most naturally to transfer their love to
humanity. This would seem to be the most logical thing, and this is
theoretically advocated by men, who do not observe that love is a
sentiment which one may have, but cannot preach, and that, besides,
for love there must be an object, whereas humanity is not an object,
but only a fiction.
The tribe, the family, even the state, are not invented by men, but
were formed naturally like a swarm of bees or ants, and actually
exist. A man who loves his family for the sake of his animal
personality, knows whom he loves: Anna, Mary, John, Peter, and so
forth. A man who loves a race and is proud of it, knows that he
loves the whole race of the Guelphs, or all the Ghibellines; he who
loves the state knows that he loves France as far as the Rhine and
the Pyrenees, and its capital, Paris, and its history, and so forth.
But what does a man love, when he loves humanity? There is the
state, the nation; there is the abstract conception--man; but there
is not, and there cannot be, a real conception of humanity.
Humanity? Where is the limit of humanity? Where does it end and
where does it begin? Does humanity stop short of a savage, an idiot,
an alcoholic, an insane person? If we are going to draw a line of
demarcation for humanity, so as to exclude the lower representatives
of the human race, where are we going to draw it? Are we going to
exclude the negroes, as the Americans do, and the Hindoos, as some
English do, and the Jews, as some do? But if we are going to include
all men without exception, why include men only, and not the higher
animals, many of whom stand higher than the lower representatives of
the human race?
We do not know humanity as an external object,--we do not know its
limits. Humanity is a fiction, and it cannot be loved. It would
indeed be very convenient, if men could love humanity just as they
love the family; it would be very convenient, as the communists talk
of doing, to substitute the communal for the competitive tendency
of human activity, and the universal for the individual, so that
every man may be for all, and all for every man, only there are no
motives whatever for it. The positivists, the communists, and all
the preachers of the scientific brotherhood preach the widening of
that love which men have for themselves and for their families and
for the state, so as to embrace all humanity, forgetting that the
love which they advocate is the personal love, which, by spreading
out thinner, could extend to the family; which, by spreading out
still thinner, could extend to the natural country of birth, which
completely vanishes as soon as it reaches an artificial state, as
Austria, Turkey, England, and which we are not even able to imagine,
when we come to humanity, an entirely mystical subject.
"Man loves himself (his animal life), loves his family, loves even
his country. Why should he not love also humanity? How nice that
would be! By the way, this is precisely what Christianity teaches."
Thus think the preachers of the positivist, communistic, socialistic
brotherhoods. It would indeed be very nice, but it cannot be,
because love which is based on the personal and the social
conception of life cannot go beyond the state.
The error of judgment consists in this, that the social
life-conception, on which is based the love of family and of
country, is built on the love of personality, and that this love,
being transferred from the personality to the family, the race, the
nationality, the state, keeps growing weaker and weaker, and in the
state reaches its extreme limit, beyond which it cannot go.
The necessity for widening the sphere of love is incontestable; but
at the same time this very necessity for its widening in reality
destroys the possibility of love and proves the insufficiency of the
personal, the human love.
And here the preachers of the positivist, communistic, socialistic
brotherhoods, to succour the human love, which has proved
insufficient, propose the Christian love,--in its consequences
alone, and not in its foundations: they propose the love of humanity
alone, without the love of God.
But there can be no such love. There exists no motive for it.
Christian love results only from the Christian conception of life,
according to which the meaning of life consists in the love of God
and in serving Him.
By a natural progression, from the love of self to the love of
family, of the race, of the nation, of the state, the social
conception of life has brought men to the consciousness of the
necessity for a love of humanity, which has no limits and blends
with everything in existence,--to something which evokes no
sensations in man; it has brought them to a contradiction, which
cannot be solved by the social conception of life.
Only the Christian teaching in all its significance, by giving a
new meaning to life, solves it. Christianity recognizes the love of
self, and of the family, and of the nation, and of humanity,--not
only of humanity, but of everything living, of everything in
existence; it recognizes the necessity for an endless widening of
the sphere of love; but the object of this love it does not find
outside of self, or in the aggregate of personalities,--in the
family, the race, the state, humanity, in the whole external world,
but in oneself, in one's personality,--which, however, is a divine
personality, the essence of which is the same love, to the necessity
of widening which the animal personality was brought, in saving
itself from the consciousness of its perdition.
The difference between the Christian teaching and what preceded it
is this, that the preceding social teaching said: "Live contrary
to your nature (meaning only the animal nature), subordinate it
to the external law of the family, the society, the state;" but
Christianity says: "Live in accordance with your nature (meaning the
divine nature), subordinating it to nothing,--neither to your own,
nor to anybody else's animal nature,--and you will attain what you
are striving after by subordinating your external nature to external
laws."
The Christian teaching takes man back to the primitive consciousness
of self, not of self--the animal, but of self--God, the divine
spark, of self--the son of God, of just such a God as the Father
himself, but included in an animal integument. And the recognition
of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love, satisfies
also all those demands for the widening of the sphere of love, to
which the man of the social conception of life was brought. There,
with a greater and ever greater widening of the sphere of love for
the salvation of the personality, love was a necessity and was
applied to certain objects,--self, the family, society, humanity;
with the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and
is not adapted to anything, but is an essential quality of man's
soul. Man does not love because it is advantageous for him to love
this man or these men, but because love is the essence of his
soul,--because he cannot help loving.
The Christian teaching consists in pointing out to man that the
essence of his soul is love, that his good is derived not from the
fact that he will love this or that man, but from the fact that he
will love the beginning of everything, God, whom he recognizes in
himself through love, and so will love everybody and everything.
In this does the fundamental difference between the Christian
teaching and the teaching of the positivists and of all the
theorists of the non-Christian universal brotherhood consist.
Such are the two chief misconceptions concerning the Christian
teaching, from which originate the majority of the false opinions in
regard to it. One is, that, like the preceding teachings, Christ's
teaching inculcates rules, which men are obliged to follow, and
that these rules are impracticable; the other is, that the whole
significance of Christianity consists in the teaching about the
advantageous cohabitation of humanity, as one family, for which,
without mentioning the love of God, it is necessary only to follow
the rule of love toward humanity.
The false opinion of the scientific men, that the teaching of
the supernatural forms the essence of the Christian teaching, and
that Christ's vital teaching is impracticable, together with the
misconception which arises from this false opinion, forms the second
cause why Christianity is not understood by the men of our time.