V.

There are many causes for the failure to comprehend Christ's

teaching. One cause lies in this, that men assume that they

understand the teaching, when they decide, as the churchmen do,

that it was transmitted to us in a supernatural manner; or, as the

scientific men do, that they understand it, when they have studied a

part of those external phenomena in which it is expressed. Another

cause of a failure to comprehend lies in the misconceptions as to

the impracticability of the teaching and as to this, that it ought

to give way to the teaching about the love of humanity; but the

chief cause which has engendered all these misconceptions is this,

that Christ's teaching is considered to be such as can be accepted,

or not, without changing one's life.

The men who are accustomed to the existing order of things, who love

it and are afraid to change it, try to comprehend the teaching as a

collection of revelations and rules, which may be accepted, without

changing their lives, whereas Christ's teaching is not merely a

teaching about rules which a man may follow, but the elucidation

of a new meaning of life, which determines the whole, entirely new

activity of humanity for the period upon which it is entering.

Human life moves, passes, like the life of the individual, and every

age has its corresponding life-conception, and this life-conception

is inevitably accepted by men. Those men who do not consciously

accept the life-conception proper for their age are brought to it

unconsciously. What takes place with the change of views on life

in the case of individuals, takes place also with the change of the

views on life in the case of nations and of all humanity. If a man

with a family continues to be guided in his activity by a childish

comprehension of life, his life will become so hard for him that

he will involuntarily seek another comprehension of life, and will

gladly accept the one which is proper for his age.

The same is now taking place in our humanity in the transition from

the pagan conception of life to the Christian, which is now going

on. The social man of our time is brought by life itself to the

necessity of renouncing the pagan conception of life, which is no

longer proper for the present age of humanity, and of submitting

to the demands of the Christian teaching, the truths of which, no

matter how distorted and misinterpreted they may be, are still known

to him and alone furnish a solution to those contradictions in which

he is losing himself.

If the demands of the Christian teaching seem strange and even

perilous to the man of the social life-conception, the demands of

the social teaching anciently seemed just as incomprehensible and

perilous to a savage, when he did not yet fully comprehend them and

was unable to foresee their consequences.

"It is irrational for me to sacrifice my peace or even my life,"

says the savage, "in order to defend something incomprehensible,

intangible, conventional,--the family, the race, the country,

and, above all else, it is dangerous to give myself over to the

disposition of a foreign power."

But the time came when the savage, on the one hand, comprehended,

however dimly, the significance of the social life, the significance

of its prime mover,--the public approval or condemnation,--glory;

on the other hand, when the sufferings of his personal life became

so great that he no longer continued to believe in the truth of his

former conception of life, and accepted the social, the political

teaching and submitted to it.

The same now takes place with the social, the political man.

"It is irrational for me," says the social man, "to sacrifice

my good, the good of my family, my country, for the fulfilment

of the conditions of some higher law, which demands from me the

renunciation of the most natural and the best sentiments of love

for myself, my family, my country, and, above all, it is dangerous

to reject the security of life, which is given by the political

structure."

But the time comes when, on the one hand, the dim consciousness in

his soul of a higher law of love for God and for his neighbour, and,

on the other, the sufferings which arise from the contradictions of

life, compel him to reject the social life-conception and to accept

the new, Christian conception of life, which is offered to him, and

which solves all the contradictions and removes the sufferings of

his life. And this time has now come.

To us, who thousands of years ago experienced the transition from

the animal, personal life-conception to the social one, it seems

that that transition was necessary and natural, and this, the one

through which we have been passing these eighteen hundred years,

is arbitrary, unnatural, and terrible. But that only seems so to

us, because the other transition is already accomplished, and its

activity has already passed into the subconscious, while the present

transition is not yet accomplished, and we have to accomplish it

consciously.

The social life-conception entered into the consciousness of men

through centuries and millenniums, passed through several forms, and

has now passed for humanity into the sphere of the subconscious,

which is transmitted through heredity, education, and habit, and so

it seems natural to us. But five thousand years ago it seemed to

men just as unnatural and terrible as now the Christian teaching

seems to us in its true meaning.

It now seems to us that the demands of the Christian teaching

for a universal brotherhood, abolition of nationalities, absence

of property, the apparently so strange non-resistance to evil,

are impossible demands. But just so strange, thousands of years

ago, seemed the demands, not only of the state, but also of the

family, as, for example, the demand that the parents should support

their children, and the young--the old, and that husband and wife

should be true to one another. Still more strange, even senseless,

seemed the political demands,--that the citizens should submit to

the powers that be, pay taxes, go to war in the defence of their

country, and so forth. It now seems to us that all such demands are

simple, intelligible, natural, and have nothing mystical or even

strange about them; but five or three thousand years ago, these

demands seemed impossible.

The social life-conception served as a basis for religions for the

very reason that, when it manifested itself to men, it seemed to

them quite unintelligible, mystical, and supernatural. Now, since we

have outlived this phase of the life of humanity, we understand the

rational causes of the union of men in families, communes, states;

but in antiquity the demands for such a union were manifested in the

name of the supernatural, and were confirmed by it.

The patriarchal religion deified the families, races, nations: the

political religions deified kings and states. Even now the majority

of the men of little culture, such as our peasants, who call the

Tsar an earthly God, submit to the social laws, not from a rational

consciousness of their necessity, not because they have a conception

of the idea of the state, but from a religious sentiment.

Even so now the Christian teaching represents itself to the men

of the social, or pagan, world-conception in the form of a

supernatural religion, whereas in reality there is in it nothing

mysterious, or mystical, or supernatural; it is nothing but the

teaching about life, which corresponds to that stage of the material

development, to that age, in which humanity is, and which must

therefore inevitably be accepted by it.

The time will come, and is already at hand, when the Christian

foundations of life, equality, brotherhood of men, community of

possession, non-resistance to evil, will become as natural and

as simple as the foundations of the family, the social, and the

political life now appear to us.

Neither man nor humanity can in their motion turn back. The

social, family, and political life-conceptions have been outlived

by men, and it is necessary to go ahead and accept the higher

life-conception, which indeed is being done now.

This motion takes place from two sides, consciously, in consequence

of spiritual causes, and unconsciously, in consequence of material

causes.

Just as the individual seldom changes his life merely in accordance

with the indications of reason, but as a rule, in spite of the new

meaning and the new aims indicated by reason, continues to live

his former life and changes it only when his life becomes entirely

contradictory to his consciousness, and, therefore, agonizing, so

also humanity, having come through its religious guides to know the

new meaning of life, the new aims, toward which it must tend, even

after this knowledge continues for a long time, in the case of the

majority of men, to live the previous life, and is guided to the

acceptance of a new life-conception only through the impossibility

of continuing the former life.

In spite of the demands for the change of life, as cognized and

expressed by the religious guides and accepted by the wisest men,

the majority of men, in spite of the religious relation to these

guides, that is, the faith in their teaching, continue in the more

complex life to be guided by the previous teaching, just as a man of

a family would act, if, knowing how he ought to live at his age, he

should from habit and frivolity continue to live a child's life.

It is this that takes place in the matter of the transition of

humanity from one age to another, such as is now going on. Humanity

has outgrown its social, political age, and has entered upon a new

one. It knows the teaching which ought to be put at the foundation

of the life of this new age, but from inertia continues to hold on

to the previous forms of life. From this lack of correspondence

between the life-conception and the practice of life there arises a

series of contradictions and sufferings, which poison our life and

demand its change.

We need only to compare the practice of life with its theory, in

order that we may be frightened at the crying contradiction of the

conditions of life and of our consciousness, in which we live.

Our whole life is one solid contradiction to everything we know

and consider necessary and right. This contradiction is in

everything,--in the economic, the political, the international life.

As though forgetting what we know, and for a time putting aside what

we believe in (we cannot help but believe, because this constitutes

our only foundations of life), we do everything contrary to what our

conscience and our common sense demand of us.

In economic, political, and international relations we are guided by

those foundations which were useful to men three and five thousand

years ago, and which directly contradict our present consciousness

and those conditions of life in which we now are.

It was well enough for a man of antiquity to live amidst a division

of men into slaves and masters, when he believed that this division

was from God, and that it could not be otherwise. But is a similar

division possible in our day?

A man of the ancient world could consider himself in the right to

use the benefits of this world to the disadvantage of other men,

causing them to suffer for generations, because he believed that men

are born of various breeds, noble and base, of the generation of

Japheth and of Ham. Not only the greatest sages of the world, the

teachers of humanity, Plato, Aristotle, justified the existence of

slaves and proved the legality of it, but even three centuries ago

men who wrote of the imaginary society of the future, of Utopia,

could not imagine it without slaves.

The men of antiquity, and even of the Middle Ages, believed,

believed firmly, that men are not equal, that only the Persians,

only the Greeks, only the Romans, only the French were real men. But

those men who in our time champion aristocratism and patriotism do

not believe, cannot believe, in what they say.

We all know, and we cannot help but know, even if we have never

heard or read this thought clearly expressed and have never

expressed it ourselves, we, having imbibed this consciousness, which

is borne in the Christian atmosphere, know with our whole heart, and

we cannot help but know, that fundamental truth of the Christian

teaching, that we all are the sons of one Father, all of us, no

matter where we may live or what language we may speak,--that we are

all brothers and are subject only to the law of love, which by our

common Father is implanted in our hearts.

No matter what the manner of thought and degree of culture of a

man of our time may be, be he a cultured liberal of any shade

whatever, be he a philosopher of any camp, be he a scientific man,

an economist, of any school, be he an uncultured, even a religious

man of any confession of faith,--every man of our time knows that

all men have the same right to life and to the benefits of this

world, that no man is better or worse than any one else, that all

men are equal. Everybody knows this with absolute certainty and

with his whole being, and at the same time not only sees all about

him the division of men into two castes: one, which is working, is

oppressed, in need, in suffering, and the other, idle, oppressing,

and living in luxury and pleasure,--he not only sees this, but

involuntarily from one side or another takes part in this division

of men, which his reason rejects, and he cannot help but suffer from

the consciousness of such a contradiction and from participation in

it.

Be he master or slave, a man of our time cannot help but experience

a constant agonizing contradiction between his consciousness and

reality, and sufferings which arise from it.

The working masses, the great majority of people, suffering from

the constant, all-absorbing, senseless, dawnless labour and

sufferings, suffer most of all from the consciousness of the crying

contradiction between what exists and what ought to be, as the

result of everything which is professed by them and by those who

have placed them in this position and maintain them in it.

They know that they are in slavery, and are perishing in want and

darkness, in order to serve the lust of the minority, which keeps

them in slavery. They know this and give expression to it. And this

consciousness not only increases their sufferings, but even forms

the essence of their sufferings.

The ancient slave knew that he was a slave by nature, but our

workman, feeling himself to be a slave, knows that he should not

be a slave, and so experiences the torments of Tantalus, eternally

wishing for and not receiving what not only could, but even should

be. The sufferings of the working classes which result from the

contradiction between what is and what ought to be, are increased

tenfold by the envy and hatred which result from them.

A workman of our time, even though his work may be lighter than

that of an ancient slave and he may have attained an eight-hour

work-day and a wage of three dollars per day, will not cease

suffering, because, in manufacturing articles which he will not make

use of, and working, not for himself and at his pleasure, but from

necessity, for whims of luxurious and idle people in general and for

the enrichment of one man, the rich owner of the factory or plant,

in particular, he knows that all this is taking place in a world in

which not only they have accepted the scientific proposition that

only work is wealth, that the exploitation of other men's labour

is unjust, illegal, amenable to punishment by law, but also they

profess Christ's teaching, according to which all are brothers, and

a man's worth and merit consists only in serving his neighbour, and

not in making use of him.

He knows all this, and he cannot help but suffer torments from this

crying contradiction between what ought to be and what actually

exists. "From all the data and from everything which I know all

men profess," the labouring man says to himself, "I ought to be

free, equal to all other men, and loved; but I am a slave,--I am

humiliated and hated." And he himself hates and seeks for means

to save himself from this position, to throw off his foe, who is

pressing down on him, and himself to get on top of him. They say,

"The working men are not right in their desire to take the place of

the capitalists, nor the poor in their desire to take the place of

the rich." This is not true: the working men and the poor would be

in the wrong, if they wished for it in a world in which slaves and

masters, the rich and the poor, are established by God; but they

wish for it in a world in which is professed the Gospel teaching,

the first proposition of which is the filial relation of men to God,

and so the brotherhood and equality of all men. And no matter how

much men may try, it is impossible to conceal the fact that one of

the first conditions of a Christian life is love, not in words, but

in work.

In a still greater contradiction and in still greater sufferings

lives the man of the so-called cultured class. Every such man, if he

believes in anything, believes, if not in the brotherhood of men,

at least in humanitarianism; if not in humanitarianism, at least in

justice; if not in justice, at least in science,--and with all that

knows that his whole life is built on conditions which are quite

the reverse of all that, of all the tenets of Christianity, and

humanity, and justice, and science.

He knows that all the habits in which he is brought up, and the

deprivation of which would be a torment for him, can be gratified

only by the painful, often perilous labour of oppressed working men,

that is, by the most palpable, coarse violation of those principles

of Christianity, humanitarianism, justice, and even science (I

mean the demands of political economy), which he professes. He

professes the principles of brotherhood, humanitarianism, justice,

science, and yet lives in such a way that he needs that oppression

of the labouring men which he denies, and even in such a way that

his whole life is an exploitation of this oppression, and not only

does he live in this way, but also he directs his activity to the

maintenance of this order of things, which is directly opposed to

everything in which he believes.

We are all brothers, and yet every morning my brother or my sister

carries out my vessel. We are all brothers, and I need every morning

my cigar, sugar, a mirror, and so forth, objects in the manufacture

of which my brothers and my sisters, who are my equals, have been

losing their health, and I employ these articles and even demand

them. We are all brothers, and I live by working in a bank, or in

a business house, or a shop, in order to make all the wares which

my brothers need more expensive for them. We are all brothers,

and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging, and

punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned

by the whole composition of my life, and who, I know myself, ought

not to be punished, but corrected. We are all brothers, and I live

by receiving a salary for collecting the taxes from poor working

men, to be used for the luxury of the idle and the rich. We are all

brothers, and I receive a salary for preaching to people what is

supposed to be the Christian religion, in which I do not believe

myself, and which deprives them of the possibility of finding out

the real faith. I receive a salary as a priest, a bishop, for

deceiving people in what is the most important matter for them. We

are all brothers, but I give to the poor my pedagogical, medical,

literary labours for money only. We are all brothers, but I receive

a salary for preparing myself to commit murder, studying how to

kill, or making a gun, powder, fortresses.

The whole life of our higher classes is one solid contradiction,

which is the more agonizing, the more sensitive man's conscience is.

The man with a sensitive conscience cannot help but suffer, if he

lives this life. There is one means by which he can free himself

from this suffering,--it consists in drowning his conscience; but

even if such men succeed in drowning their conscience, they cannot

drown their terror.

Insensitive people of the higher, the oppressing classes, and those

who have drowned their consciences, if they do not suffer from

their consciences, suffer from fear and hatred. Nor can they help

but suffer. They know of that hatred against them which exists,

and cannot help but exist, among the labouring classes; and they

know that the working men know that they are deceived and outraged,

and they are beginning to organize for the purpose of throwing off

the oppression and retaliating upon the oppressors. The higher

classes see the unions, strikes, the First of May, and they feel the

calamity which is threatening them, and this terror poisons their

life. They feel the calamity which is threatening them, and the

terror which they experience passes into a feeling of self-defence

and hatred. They know that if they weaken for a moment in their

struggle with the slaves oppressed by them, they will themselves

perish, because the slaves are enraged, and this rage is growing

with every day of the oppression. The oppressors cannot stop

oppressing, even if they should wish to do so. They know that they

themselves will perish, the moment they stop or even weaken in their

oppressions. And they do oppress, in spite of their seeming concern

for the welfare of the labouring people, for an eight-hour day,

for the prohibition to employ children and women, for pensions and

rewards. All this is a deception or a provision for eliciting work

from the slave; but the slave remains a slave, and the master, who

could not live without the slave, is less than ever prepared to free

him.

The ruling classes are, in relation to the workingmen, in the

position of a man who is astride a man whom he holds down and does

not let go of, not so much because he does not want to let go of

him, as because he knows that he need but for a moment let go of the

subdued man, and the subdued man will cut his throat, because the

subdued man is enraged and has a knife in his hand. And so, whether

they be sensitive or not, our wealthy classes cannot enjoy the good

things which they have taken from the poor, as the ancients did, who

believed in their right. Their whole life and all their pleasures

are poisoned by rebukes of conscience or by terror.

Such is the economical contradiction. More striking still is the

political contradiction.

All men are above all else educated in the habits of obedience to

the laws of the state. The whole life of the men of our time is

determined by the law of the state. A man marries or gets a divorce,

educates his children, even professes a faith (in many states) in

accordance with the law. What is this law, which determines the

whole life of men? Do the men believe in this law? Do they consider

it to be true? Not in the least. In the majority of cases, the men

of our time do not believe in the justice of this law, despise it,

and yet obey it. It was all very well for the men of antiquity to

carry out their laws. They believed firmly that their law (which for

the most part was also religious) was the one true law which all men

must obey. But we? We know, and we cannot help but know, that the

law of our state is not only not the one eternal law, but that it

is only one of many laws of various countries, equally imperfect,

and frequently and palpably false and unjust, and widely discussed

in the newspapers. It was all very well for a Jew to submit to his

laws, when he had no doubt but that they were written by God's

finger; or, for a Roman, when he thought that the nymph Egeria had

written his laws; or even when they believed that the kings who gave

the laws were the anointed of the Lord, or even that the legislative

bodies had a desire to find the best laws, and were able to do so.

But we know how laws are made; we have all been behind the scenes;

we all know that laws are the results of greed, deception, the

struggle of parties,--that in them there is and there can be no true

justice. And so the men of our time cannot believe that obedience to

civil or political laws would satisfy the demands of the rationality

of human nature. Men have known for a long time that it is not

sensible to obey a law of the correctness of which there can be any

doubt, and so they cannot help but suffer, if they obey a law the

rationality and obligatoriness of which they do not acknowledge.

A man cannot help but suffer, when his whole life is determined in

advance by laws which he must obey under the menace of punishment,

and in the rationality and justice of which he does not believe,

and the unnaturalness, cruelty, injustice of which he clearly

recognizes. We recognize the uselessness of custom-houses and

import duties, and we must pay the duties; we recognize the

uselessness of the expenses for the support of royal courts and

many governmental offices; we recognize the harmfulness of the

church propaganda, and we must contribute to the support of these

institutions; we recognize the cruelty and unscrupulousness of

the penalties imposed by courts of justice, and we must take part

in them; we recognize the irregularity and harmfulness of the

distribution of land-ownership, and we must submit to it; we do not

recognize the indispensableness of armies and of war, and must bear

terrible burdens for the maintenance of armies and the waging of

wars, and so forth.

But these contradictions are as nothing in comparison with the

contradiction which has now arisen among men in their international

relations, and which, under threat of ruining both human reason and

human life, demands a solution. This is the contradiction between

the Christian conscience and war.

We are all Christian nations, who live the same spiritual life, so

that every good, fruitful thought, which springs up in one corner

of the earth, is at once communicated to the whole Christian world,

evoking similar sensations of joy and pride, independently of

nationality; we, who not only love the thinkers, benefactors, poets,

scholars of other nations, but also pride ourselves on the exploit

of a Damien, as though it were our own; we, who just love the men of

other nationalities,--the French, the Germans, the Americans, the

English; we, who not only respect their qualities, but rejoice when

we meet them, who give them a smile of recognition, who not only

could not regard a war with them as something to be proud of, but

who could not even think without horror that any disagreement may

arise between these men and us,--we are all called to take part in

murder, which must inevitably take place, to-morrow, if not to-day.

It was all very well for a Jew, a Greek, a Roman not only to

defend the independence of his nation by means of murder, but by

the means of murder also to cause other nations to submit to him,

for he believed firmly that his nation was the one true, good, kind

nation, which was loved by God, and that all the other nations were

Philistines, barbarians. Even the men of the Middle Ages and the men

of the end of the last and the beginning of this century could have

believed so. But we, no matter how much we may be teased to do so,

can no longer believe in this, and this contradiction is so terrible

for the men of our time that it is impossible to live, if we do not

destroy it.

"We live in a time which is full of contradictions," Count

Komárovski, professor of international law, writes in his learned

treatise. "In the press of all countries there is constantly shown

a universal tendency toward peace, toward its necessity for all

nations. In the same sense express themselves the representatives

of governments, as private individuals and as official organs,

in parliamentary debates, in diplomatic exchanges of opinion,

and even in international treaties. At the same time, however,

the governments annually increase the military forces of their

countries, impose new taxes, make loans, and leave to future

generations, as a legacy, the obligation to bear the blunders of

the present senseless politics. What a crying contradiction between

words and deeds!

"Of course, the governments, to justify these measures, point to

the exclusively defensive character of all these expenditures

and armaments, but none the less it remains a puzzle for every

unbiassed man, whence we are to expect attacks, since all the

great powers unanimously in their politics pursue the one aim of

defence. In reality this looks as though each of these powers

waited every moment to be attacked by another, and these are the

consequences,--universal distrust and a preternatural endeavour of

one power to surpass the force of the others. Such an emulation

in itself increases the danger of war: the nations cannot for any

length of time stand the intensified arming, and sooner or later

will prefer war to all the disadvantages of the present condition

and constant menace. Thus the most insignificant cause will be

sufficient to make the fire of a universal war flame up in the

whole of Europe. It is incorrect to think that such a crisis can

cure us of the political and economical calamities which oppress

us. Experience from the wars which have been waged in recent years

teaches us that every war has only sharpened the hostility of

the nations, increased the burden and the unendurableness of the

pressure of militarism, and made the politico-economic condition of

Europe more hopeless and complex."

"Modern Europe keeps under arms an active army of nine millions

of men," writes Enrico Ferri, "and fifteen millions of reserves,

expending on them four milliards of francs per year. By arming

itself more and more, it paralyzes the sources of the social and

the individual welfare, and may easily be compared to a man who, to

provide himself with a gun, condemns himself to anæmia, at the same

time wasting all his strength for the purpose of making use of the

very gun with which he is providing himself, and under the burden of

which he will finally fall."

The same was said by Charles Butt,[11] in his speech which he

delivered in London before the Association for the Reform and

Codification of the Law of Nations, July 26, 1887. After pointing

out the same nine millions and over of the active armies and

seventeen millions of reserves, and the enormous expenses of the

governments for the support of these armies and equipments, he says:

"But this forms only a small part of the actual cost, for besides

the figures mentioned, which constitute merely the war budgets of

the nations, we have to take into account the enormous loss to

society by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men ... from the

occupations of productive industry, together with the prodigious

capital invested in all warlike preparations and appliances, and

which is absolutely unproductive.... One necessary result of the

expenditure on wars and preparations for war is the steady growth of

national debts.... The aggregate national debts of Europe, by far

the larger proportion of which has been contracted for war purposes,

amount at the present time to £4,680,000,000."

[11] Not Charles Butt, but Henry Richard.

The same Komárovski says in another place: "We are living in a

hard time. Everywhere do we hear complaints as to the slackness

of business and industry and in general as to the bad economic

conditions: people point out the hard conditions of the life of the

labouring classes and the universal impoverishment of the masses.

But, in spite of it, the governments, in their endeavour to maintain

their independence, reach the extreme limits of madness. Everywhere

they invent new taxes and imposts, and the financial oppression

of the nations knows no limits. If we look at the budgets of the

European states for the last one hundred years, we shall first of

all be struck by their constantly progressive and rapid growth. How

can we explain this extraordinary phenomenon, which sooner or later

threatens us with inevitable bankruptcy?

"This is incontestably due to the expenditures caused by the

maintenance of an army, which swallow one-third and even one-half

of the budgets of the European states. What is most lamentable in

connection with it is this, that no end can be foreseen to this

increase of the budgets and impoverishment of the masses. What is

socialism, if not a protest against this abnormal condition, in

which the greater part of the population of our part of the world

finds itself?"

"We ruin ourselves," says Frederic Passy, in a note read at the

last Congress (1890) of Universal Peace, at London, "in preparing

the means for taking part in the mad butcheries of the future, or

in paying the interests of debts bequeathed to us by the mad and

culpable butcheries of the past. We die of starvation, in order to

be able to kill one another off."

Farther on, speaking of how France looks upon this subject, he says:

"We believe that one hundred years after the _Declaration of the

rights of man and of a citizen_ it is time to recognize the rights

of nations and to renounce for ever all these enterprises of force

and violence, which, under the name of conquests, are real crimes

against humanity, and which, whatever the ambition of the sovereigns

or the pride of the races ... weaken even those who seem to profit

from them."

"I am always very much surprised at the way religion is carried on

in this country," says Sir Wilfrid Lawson, at the same Congress.

"You send a boy to the Sunday school, and you tell him, 'My dear

boy, you must love your enemies; if any boy strikes you, don't

strike him again; try to reform him by loving him.' Well, the boy

stays in the Sunday school till he is fourteen or fifteen years

of age, and then his friends say, 'Put him in the army.' What has

he to do in the army? Why, not to love his enemies, but whenever

he sees an enemy to run him through the body with a bayonet. That

is the nature of all religious teaching in this country. I do not

think that that is a very good way of carrying out the precepts of

religion. I think if it is a good thing for the boy to love his

enemy, it is a good thing for the man to love his enemy."

And farther: "The nations of Europe ... keep somewhere about

twenty-eight millions of armed men to settle quarrels by killing one

another, instead of by arguing. That is what the Christian nations

of the world are doing at this moment. It is a very expensive way

also; for this publication which I saw made out that since the

year 1872 these nations had spent the almost incredible amount of

£1,500,000,000 of money in preparing, and settling their quarrels

by killing one another. Now it seems to me that with that state

of things one of two positions must be accepted: either that

Christianity is a failure or, that those who profess to expound

Christianity have failed in expounding it properly."

"Until our ironclads are withdrawn, and our army disbanded, we are

not entitled to call ourselves a Christian nation," says Mr. J.

Jowet Wilson.

In a discussion which arose in connection with the question of the

obligatoriness of Christian pastors to preach against war, Mr. G. D.

Bartlett said, among other things: "If I understand the Scriptures,

I say that men are only playing with Christianity when they ignore

this question," that is, say nothing about war. "I have lived a

longish life, I have heard many sermons, and I can say without any

exaggeration that I never heard universal peace recommended from

the pulpit half a dozen times in my life.... Some twenty years

ago I happened to stand in a drawing-room where there were forty

or fifty people, and I dared to moot the proposition that war was

incompatible with Christianity. They looked upon me as an arrant

fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as

unmitigated weakness and folly."

In the same sense spoke the Catholic Abbé Defourny: "One of the

first precepts of this eternal law which burns in the consciences of

men is the one which forbids taking the life of one's like, shedding

human blood without just cause, and without being constrained by

necessity. It is one of those laws which are most indelibly engraved

in the human heart.... But if it is a question of war, that is, of

the shedding of human blood in torrents, the men of the present

do not trouble themselves about a just cause. Those who take part

in it do not think of asking themselves whether these innumerable

murders are justifed or not, that is, if the wars, or what goes by

that name, are just or iniquitous, legal or illegal, permissible or

criminal ... whether they violate, or not, the primordial law which

prohibits homicide and murder ... without just cause. But their

conscience is mute in this matter.

"War has ceased for them to be an act which has anything to do with

morality. They have no other joy, in the fatigue and perils of the

camp, than that of being victorious, and no other sadness than

that of being vanquished.... Do not tell me that they serve their

country. A long time ago a great genius told you these words, which

have become proverbial, 'Reject justice, and what are the empires

but great societies of brigands?' And are not a band of brigands

themselves small empires? Brigands themselves have certain laws or

conventions by which they are ruled. There, too, they fight for the

conquest of booty and for the honour of the band.... The principle

of the institution" (he is talking of the establishment of an

international tribunal) "is this, that the European nations should

stop being a nation of thieves, and the armies gangs of brigands and

of pirates, and, I must add, of slaves. Yes, the armies are gangs of

slaves, slaves of one or two rulers, or one or two ministers, who

dispose of them tyrannically, without any other guarantee, we know,

than a nominal one.

"What characterizes the slave is this, that he is in the hands of

his master like a chattel, a tool, and no longer a man. Just so it

is with a soldier, an officer, a general, who march to murder and

to death without any care as to justice, by the arbitrary will of

ministers.... Thus military slavery exists, and it is the worst of

slaveries, particularly now, when by means of enforced military

service it puts the chain about the necks of all free and strong men

of the nations, in order to make of them tools of murder, killers

by profession, butchers of human flesh, for this is the only _opus

servile_ for which they are chained up and trained....

"Rulers, to the number of two or three ... united into a secret

cabinet, deliberate without control and without minutes which are

intended for publicity ... consequently without any guarantee for

the conscience of those whom they send out to be killed."

"The protests against the heavy arming do not date from our day,"

says Signor E. T. Moneta. "Listen to what Montesquieu wrote in his

time.

"'France' (you may substitute the word 'Europe') 'will be ruined

by the military. A new malady has spread through Europe; it has

infected our princes and has made them keep a disproportionate

number of troops. It has its exacerbations, and it necessarily

becomes contagious, because, as soon as one state increases what

it calls its troops, the others suddenly increase theirs, so that

nothing is gained by it but the common ruin.

"'Every monarch keeps on a war footing all the troops which he might

need in case his people were in danger of being exterminated, and

this state of tension, of all against all, is called peace. As a

result, Europe is so ruined that if private individuals were in the

condition in which the powers are in this part of the world, the

richest of them would not have anything to live on. We are poor with

the riches and the commerce of the whole universe.'

"This was written almost 150 years ago; the picture seems to be

made for to-day. One single thing has changed,--the system of

government. In the time of Montesquieu, and also afterward, they

used to say that the cause for the maintenance of great armies lay

in the absolute kings, who waged war in the hope of finding in the

conquests the means for enriching their private budgets and passing

down to history in the aureole of glory.

"Then they said, 'Oh, if the peoples could choose themselves those

who have the right to refuse the governments soldiers and money, for

then the politics of war would come to an end.'

"We have to-day representative governments in nearly all of Europe,

and none the less the expenditures for war and for its preparation

are increased in a frightful proportion.

"Evidently the folly of the princes has passed down to the governing

classes. At the present time they no longer make war because a

prince was disrespectful to a courtesan, as such things happened

in the time of Louis XIV., but by exaggerating the respectable

sentiments, like that of the national dignity and of patriotism, by

exciting public opinion against a neighbouring nation, there will

come a day when it will be sufficient to say, though the information

may not be true, that the ambassador of your government was not

received by the chief of a state, in order to make break forth the

most terrible and disastrous of wars ever seen.

"At the present time Europe keeps under arms more soldiers than

there were in the time of Napoleon's great wars. All citizens,

with few exceptions, are obliged on our continent to pass several

years in the barracks. They build fortresses, construct arsenals

and ships, constantly manufacture arms, which after awhile have to

be replaced by others, because science, which ought always to be

directed toward the well-being of men, unfortunately lends its aid

to works of destruction, invents at every instant new engines for

killing great masses of men as rapidly as possible.

"And in order to maintain so many soldiers and to make such vast

preparations for murder, they spend yearly hundreds of millions,

that is, what would be sufficient for the education of the people,

for the execution of the greatest works of public utility, and would

furnish the means for solving pacifically the social question.

"Europe, therefore, finds itself, in spite of the scientific

conquests, in a condition as though it were still living in the

worst times of the ferocious Middle Ages. All men complain of

this situation, which is not yet war, but which is not peace

either, and everybody would like to get out of it. The chiefs of

governments protest that they want peace, and it is a matter of

emulation between them as to who will make the most solemn pacific

declarations. But on the same day, or the day following, they

present to the legislative chambers propositions for increasing

the standing army, and they say that it is for the purpose of

maintaining and assuring peace that they take so many precautions.

"But it is not the kind of peace we like; nor are the nations

deceived. True peace has reciprocal confidence for its basis, while

these enormous preparations betray a profound distrust, if not a

concealed hostility, between the states. What would we say of a

man who, wishing to prove his sentiments of friendship for his

neighbour, should invite him to discuss some question with him,

while he himself is holding a revolver in his hand? It is this

flagrant contradiction between the pacific declarations and the

warlike policy of the governments that all good citizens want to see

stopped at any price and as quickly as possible."

They marvel why annually sixty thousand suicides are committed in

Europe, and those only the ones that are recorded, which excludes

Russia and Turkey; but what we ought to marvel at is not that there

are so many suicides, but so few. Every man of our time, if he

grasps the contradiction between his consciousness and his life,

is in a very desperate condition. To say nothing of all the other

contradictions between life and consciousness, which fill the life

of a man of our time, the contradiction between this last military

condition, in which Europe is, and the Christian profession of

Europe is enough to make a man despair, doubt the rationality of

human nature, and put an end to his life in this mad and beastly

world. This contradiction, the military contradiction, which is the

quintessence of all others, is so terrible that a man can live and

take part in it only by not thinking of it, by being able to forget

it.

How is this? We are all Christians,--we not only profess love of

one another, but actually live one common life, the pulse of our

life beats with the same beats, we aid one another, learn from one

another, more and more approach one another, for a common joy!

In this closer union lies the meaning of the whole of life,--and

to-morrow some maddened head of a government will say something

foolish, another man like him will answer him, and I shall go,

making myself liable to be killed, to kill men who not only have

done me no harm, but whom I love. And this is not a distant

accident, but what we are preparing ourselves for, and it is not

only a possible, but even an inevitable event.

It is enough to understand this clearly, in order to lose our mind

and shoot ourselves. And it is precisely what happens with especial

frequency among the military. We need but think for a moment, in

order that we may come to the necessity of such an ending. It is

only thus that we can explain that terrible tension with which the

men of our time incline to intoxicate themselves with wine, tobacco,

opium, cards, the reading of newspapers, travelling, all kinds of

spectacles, and amusements. All these things are done like serious,

important affairs. They are indeed important affairs. If there

existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of

the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to

one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time

are in such a state. All men of our time live in a constant crying

contradiction between consciousness and life. These contradictions

are expressed in the economic and political relations, but most

startling is this contradiction between the recognition of the law

of the brotherhood of men, as professed by Christians, and the

necessity, in which all men are placed by the universal military

service, of being prepared for hostility, for murder,--of being at

the same time a Christian and a gladiator.