X.

Christianity in its true meaning destroys the state. Thus it was

understood from the very beginning, and Christ was crucified for

this very reason, and thus it has always been understood by men who

are not fettered by the necessity of proving the justification of

the Christian state. Only when the heads of the states accepted the

external nominal Christianity did they begin to invent all those

impossible finely spun theories, according to which Christianity was

compatible with the state. But for every sincere and serious man of

our time it is quite obvious that true Christianity--the teaching of

humility, of forgiveness of offences, of love--is incompatible with

the state, with its magnificence, its violence, its executions, and

its wars. The profession of true Christianity not only excludes the

possibility of recognizing the state, but even destroys its very

foundations.

But if this is so, and it is true that Christianity is incompatible

with the state, there naturally arises the question: "What is more

necessary for the good of humanity, what more permanently secures

the good of men, the political form of life, or its destruction and

the substitution of Christianity in its place?"

Some men say that the state is most necessary for humanity, that

the destruction of the political form would lead to the destruction

of everything worked out by humanity, that the state has been and

continues to be the only form of the development of humanity, and

that all that evil which we see among the nations who live in the

political form is not due to this form, but to the abuses, which

can be mended without destruction, and that humanity, without

impairing the political form, can develop and reach a high degree

of well-being. And the men who think so adduce in confirmation of

their opinion philosophic, historic, and even religious arguments,

which to them seem incontrovertible. But there are men who assume

the opposite, namely, that, as there was a time when humanity

lived without a political form, this form is only temporary, and

the time must arrive when men shall need a new form, and that this

time has arrived even now. And the men who think so also adduce

in confirmation of their opinion philosophic, and historic, and

religious arguments, which also seem incontrovertible to them.

It is possible to write volumes in the defence of the first opinion

(they have been written long ago, and there is still no end to

them), and there can be written much against it (though but lately

begun, many a brilliant thing has been written against it).

It is impossible to prove, as the defenders of the state claim, that

the destruction of the state will lead to a social chaos, mutual

rapine, murder, and the destruction of all public institutions, and

the return of humanity to barbarism; nor can it be proved, as the

opponents of the state claim, that men have already become so wise

and good that they do not rob or kill one another, that they prefer

peace to hostility, that they will themselves without the aid of the

state arrange everything they need, and that therefore the state

not only does not contribute to all this, but, on the contrary,

under the guise of defending men, exerts a harmful and bestializing

influence upon them. It is impossible to prove either the one or

the other by means of abstract reflections. Still less can it be

proved by experience, since the question consists in this, whether

the experiment is to be made or not. The question as to whether the

time has come for abolishing the state, or not, would be insoluble,

if there did not exist another vital method for an incontestable

solution of the same.

Quite independently of anybody's reflections as to whether the

chicks are sufficiently matured for him to drive the hen away from

the nest and let the chicks out of their eggs, or whether they are

not yet sufficiently matured, the incontestable judges of the case

will be the chicks themselves, when, unable to find enough room in

their eggs, they will begin to pick them with their bills, and will

themselves come out of them.

The same is true of the question whether the time for destroying the

political form and for substituting another form has come, or not.

If a man, in consequence of the higher consciousness matured in him,

is no longer able to comply with the demands of the state, no longer

finds room in it, and at the same time no longer is in need of the

preservation of the political form, the question as to whether

men have matured for the change of the political form, or not, is

decided from an entirely different side, and just as incontestably

as for the chick that has picked its shell, into which no power

in the world can again return it, by the men themselves who have

outgrown the state and who cannot be returned to it by any power in

the world.

"It is very likely that the state was necessary and even now is

necessary for all those purposes which you ascribe to it," says the

man who has made the Christian life-conception his own, "but all I

know is that, on the one hand, I no longer need the state, and, on

the other, I can no longer perform those acts which are necessary

for the existence of the state. Arrange for yourselves what you need

for your lives: I cannot prove either the common necessity, or the

common harm of the state; all I know is what I need and what not,

what I may do and what not. I know for myself that I do not need any

separation from the other nations, and so I cannot recognize my

exclusive belonging to some one nation or state, and my subjection

to any government; I know in my own case that I do not need all

those government offices and courts, which are the product of

violence, and so I cannot take part in any of them; I know in my own

case that I do not need to attack other nations and kill them, nor

defend myself by taking up arms, and so I cannot take part in wars

and in preparations for them. It is very likely that there are some

people who cannot regard all that as necessary and indispensable. I

cannot dispute with them,--all I know concerning myself, but that

I know incontestably, is that I do not need it all and am not able

to do it. I do not need it, and I cannot do it, not because I, my

personality, do not want it, but because He who has sent me into

life, and has given me the incontestable law for guidance in my

life, does not want it."

No matter what arguments men may adduce in proof of the danger

of abolishing the power of the state and that this abolition may

beget calamities, the men who have outgrown the political form can

no longer find their place in it. And, no matter what arguments

may be adduced to a man who has outgrown the political form, about

its indispensableness, he cannot return to it, cannot take part

in the affairs which are denied by his consciousness, just as the

full-grown chicks can no longer return into the shell which they

have outgrown.

"But even if this is so," say the defenders of the existing order,

"the abolition of the violence of state would be possible and

desirable only if all men became Christians. So long as this is not

the case, so long as among men who only call themselves Christians

there are men who are no Christians, evil men, who for the sake

of their personal lust are prepared to do harm to others, the

abolition of the power of state would not only fail to be a good

for all the rest, but would even increase their wretchedness. The

abolition of the political form of life is undesirable, not only

when there is a small proportion of true Christians, but even when

all shall be Christians, while in their midst or all about them,

among other nations, there shall remain non-Christians, because the

non-Christians will with impunity rob, violate, kill the Christians

and make their life miserable. What will happen will be that the

evil men will with impunity rule the good and do violence to them.

And so the power of state must not be abolished until all the bad,

rapacious men in the world are destroyed. And as this will not

happen for a long time to come, if at all, this power, in spite of

the attempts of individual Christians at emancipating themselves

from the power of state, must be maintained for the sake of the

majority of men." Thus speak the defenders of the state. "Without

the state the evil men do violence to the good and rule over them,

but the power of state makes it possible for the good to keep the

evil in check," they say.

But, in asserting this, the defenders of the existing order of

things decide in advance the justice of the position which it is

for them to prove. In saying that without the power of state the

evil men would rule over the good, they take it for granted that

the good are precisely those who at the present time have power,

and the bad the same who are now subjugated. But it is precisely

this that has to be proved. This would be true only if in our world

took place what really does not take place, but is supposed to take

place, in China, namely, that the good are always in power, and

that, as soon as at the helm of the government stand men who are

not better than those over whom they rule, the citizens are obliged

to depose them. Thus it is supposed to be in China, but in reality

this is not so, and cannot be so, because, in order to overthrow

the power of the violating government, it is not enough to have the

right to do so,--one must also have the force. Consequently this

is only assumed to be so even in China; but in our Christian world

this has never even been assumed. In our world there is not even any

foundation for assuming that better men or the best should rule, and

not those who have seized the power and retain it for themselves and

for their descendants. Better men are absolutely unable to seize the

power and to retain it.

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love

power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with

qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride,

cunning, cruelty.

Without self-aggrandizement and debasement of others, without

hypocrisy, deceit, prisons, fortresses, executions, murders, a power

can neither arise nor maintain itself.

"If the power of state be abolished, the more evil men will rule

over the less evil ones," say the defenders of the state. But if

the Egyptians subjugated the Jews, the Persians the Egyptians, the

Macedonians the Persians, the Romans the Greeks, the barbarians

the Romans, is it possible that all those who have subjugated were

better than those whom they subjugated?

And similarly, in the transference of the power in one state from

one set of persons to another, has the power always passed into the

hands of those who were better? When Louis XVI. was deposed, and

Robespierre and later Napoleon ruled, who did rule? Better or worse

men? And when did better men rule, when men from Versailles or from

the Commune were in power? or when Charles I. or Cromwell was at the

head of the government? or when Peter III. was Tsar or when he was

killed, and the sovereign was Catherine for one part of Russia and

Pugachév for the other? Who was then evil and who good?

All men in power assert that their power is necessary in order that

the evil men may not do violence to the good, meaning by this that

they are those same good men, who protect others against the evil

men.

But to rule means to do violence, and to do violence means to do

what the other man, on whom the violence is exerted, does not wish

to have done to him, and what, no doubt, he who exerts the violence

would not wish to have done to himself; consequently, to rule means

to do to another what we do not wish to have done to ourselves, that

is, to do evil.

To submit means to prefer suffering to violence. But to prefer

suffering to violence means to be good, or at least less evil than

those who do to another what they do not wish to have done to

themselves.

And so all the probabilities are in favour of the fact that not

those who are better than those over whom they rule, but, on the

contrary, those who are worse, have always been and even now are in

power. There may also be worse men among those who submit to the

power, but it cannot be that better men should rule over worse men.

This was impossible to assume in case of the pagan inexact

definition of goodness; but with the Christian lucid and exact

definition of goodness and evil, it is impossible to think so. If

more or less good men, more or less bad men, cannot be distinguished

in the pagan world, the Christian conception of good and evil has

so clearly defined the symptoms of the good and the evil, that they

can no longer be mistaken. According to Christ's teaching the good

are those who humble themselves, suffer, do not resist evil with

force, forgive offences, love their enemies; the evil are those who

exalt themselves, rule, struggle, and do violence to people, and

so, according to Christ's teaching, there is no doubt as to where

the good are among the ruling and the subjugated. It even sounds

ridiculous to speak of ruling Christians.

The non-Christians, that is, those who base their lives on the

worldly good, must always rule over Christians, over those who

assume that their lives consist in the renunciation of this good.

Thus it has always been and it has become more and more definite,

in proportion as the Christian teaching has been disseminated and

elucidated.

The more the true Christianity spread and entered into the

consciousness of men, the less it was possible for Christians to be

among the rulers, and the easier it grew for non-Christians to rule

over Christians.

"The abolition of the violence of state at a time when not all men

in society have become true Christians would have this effect, that

the bad would rule over the good and would with impunity do violence

to them," say the defenders of the existing order of life.

"The bad will rule over the good and will do violence to them."

But it has never been different, and it never can be. Thus it has

always been since the beginning of the world, and thus it is now.

The bad always rule over the good and always do violence to them.

Cain did violence to Abel, cunning Jacob to trustful Esau, deceitful

Laban to Jacob; Caiaphas and Pilate ruled over Christ, the Roman

emperors ruled over a Seneca, an Epictetus, and good Romans who

lived in their time. John IV. with his opríchniks, the drunken

syphilitic Peter with his fools, the harlot Catherine with her

lovers, ruled over the industrious religious Russians of their time

and did violence to them. William rules over the Germans, Stambulov

over the Bulgarians, Russian officials over the Russian people. The

Germans ruled over the Italians, now they rule over Hungarians and

Slavs; the Turks have ruled over Greeks and Slavs; the English rule

over Hindoos; the Mongolians rule over the Chinese.

Thus, whether the political violence be abolished or not, the

condition of the good men who are violated by the bad will not be

changed thereby.

It is absolutely impossible to frighten men with this, that the bad

will rule over the good, because what they are frightened with is

precisely what has always been and cannot be otherwise.

The whole pagan history of humanity consists of only those cases

when the worse seized the power over the less bad, and, having

seized it, maintained it by cruelties and cunning, and, proclaiming

themselves as guardians of justice and defenders of the good against

the bad, ruled over the good. As to the rulers' saying that, if it

were not for their power, the worse would do violence to the good,

it means only this, that the violators in power do not wish to cede

this power to other violators, who may wish to take it from them.

But, in saying this, the rulers only give themselves away. They say

that their power, that is, violence, is necessary for the defence of

men against some other violators, or such as may still appear.[16]

[16] Comically striking in this respect is the naïve assertion of

the Russian authorities in doing violence to other nationalities,

the Poles, Baltic Germans, Jews. The Russian government practises

extortion on its subjects, for centuries has not troubled itself

about the Little Russians in Poland, nor about the Letts in the

Baltic provinces, nor about the Russian peasants who have been

exploited by all manner of men, and suddenly it becomes a defender

of the oppressed against the oppressors, those very oppressors whom

it oppresses.--_Author's Note._

The exercise of violence is dangerous for the very reason that, as

soon as it is exercised, all the arguments adduced by the violators

can, not only with the same, but even with greater force, be applied

against them. They speak of the past, and more frequently of the

imaginary future of violence, but themselves without cessation

commit acts of violence. "You say that men used to rob and kill

others, and you are afraid that men will rob and kill one another,

if your power does not exist. That may be so or not, but your

ruining thousands of men in prisons, at hard labour, in fortresses,

in exile; your ruining millions of families with your militarism,

and destroying millions of people physically and morally, is not

imaginary, but real violence, against which, according to your

own statement, people ought to fight by exercising violence.

Consequently, those evil men, against whom, according to your own

reflection, it is absolutely necessary to exercise violence, are you

yourselves," is what the violated ought to say to the violators, and

the non-Christians have always spoken and thought and acted in this

manner. If the violated are worse than those who exercise violence,

they attack them and try to overthrow them, and, under favourable

conditions, do overthrow them, or, what is most usual, enter the

ranks of the violators and take part in their acts of violence.

Thus the very thing with which the defenders of the state frighten

men, that, if there did not exist a violating power, the bad

would be ruling over the good, is what without cessation has been

accomplished in the life of humanity, and so the abolition of

political violence can in no case be the cause of the increase of

the violence of the bad over the good.

When the violence of the government is destroyed, acts of violence

will, probably, be committed by other men than before; but the sum

of the violence will in no case be increased, simply because the

power will pass from the hands of one set of men into those of

another.

"The violence of state will be stopped only when the bad men in

society shall be destroyed," say the defenders of the existing

order, meaning by this that, since there will always be bad men,

violence will never come to a stop. That would be true only if what

they assume actually existed, namely, that the violators are better,

and that the only means for the emancipation of men from evil is

violence. In that case violence could, indeed, never be stopped.

But as this is not the case, and the very opposite is true, namely,

that it is not the better men who exercise violence against the

bad, but the bad who do violence to the good, and that outside of

violence, which never puts a stop to evil, there is another means

for the abolition of violence, the assertion that violence will

never stop is not correct. Violence grows less and less, and must

evidently stop, but not, as the defenders of the existing order

imagine, because men who are subject to violence will in consequence

of the influence exerted upon them by the governments become better

and better (in consequence of this they will, on the contrary,

always become worse), but because, since all men are constantly

growing better and better, even the worst men in power, growing less

and less evil, will become sufficiently good to be incapable of

exercising violence.

The forward movement of humanity takes place, not in this way, that

the best elements of society, seizing the power and using violence

against those men who are in their power, make them better, as the

conservatives and revolutionists think, but, in the first and chief

place, in that all men in general unswervingly and without cessation

more and more consciously acquire the Christian life-conception, and

in the second place, in that, even independently of the conscious

spiritual activity of men, men unconsciously, in consequence of the

very process of seizure of power by one set of men and transference

to another set, and involuntarily are brought to a more Christian

relation to life. This process takes place in the following manner:

the worst elements of society, having seized the power and being in

possession of it, under the influence of the sobering quality which

always accompanies it, become less and less cruel and less able to

make use of the cruel forms of violence, and, in consequence of

this, give place to others, in whom again goes on the process of

softening and, so to speak, unconscious Christianization.

What takes place in men is something like the process of boiling.

All the men of the majority of the non-Christian life-conception

strive after power and struggle to obtain it. In this struggle the

most cruel and coarse, and the least Christian elements of society,

by doing violence to the meeker, more Christian people, who are more

sensible to the good, rise to the higher strata of society. And

here with the men in this condition there takes place what Christ

predicted, saying: "Woe unto you that are rich, that are full now,

and when all are glorified." What happens is that men in power,

who are in possession of the consequences of power,--of glory and

wealth,--having reached certain different aims, which they have set

to themselves in their desires, recognize their vanity and return to

the position which they left. Charles V., John IV., Alexander I.,

having recognized all the vanity and evil of power, renounced it,

because they saw all its evil and were no longer able calmly to make

use of violence as of a good deed, as they had done before.

But it is not only a Charles and an Alexander who travel on this

road and recognize the vanity and evil of power: through this

unconscious process of softening of manners passes every man who has

acquired the power toward which he has been striving, not only every

minister, general, millionaire, merchant, but also every head of an

office, who has obtained the place he has been ten years waiting

for, every well-to-do peasant, who has laid by a hundred or two

hundred roubles.

Through this process pass not only separate individuals, but also

aggregates of men, whole nations.

The temptations of power and of everything which it gives, of

wealth, honours, luxurious life, present themselves as a worthy aim

for the activity of men only so long as the power is not attained;

but the moment a man attains it, they reveal their emptiness and

slowly lose their force of attraction, like clouds, which have form

and beauty only from a distance: one needs but enter them, in order

that that which seemed beautiful in them should disappear.

Men who have attained power and wealth, frequently the very men who

have gained them, more frequently their descendants, stop being so

anxious for power and so cruel in attaining it.

Having through experience, under the influence of Christianity,

learned the vanity of the fruits of violence, men, at times in

one, at others in a few generations, lose those vices which are

evoked by the passion for power and wealth, and, becoming less

cruel, do not hold their position, and are pushed out of power

by other, less Christian, more evil men, and return to strata of

society lower in position, but higher in morality, increasing the

average of the Christian consciousness of all men. But immediately

after them other, worse, coarser, less Christian elements of

society rise to the top, again are subjected to the same process as

their predecessors, and again in one or a few generations, having

experienced the vanity of the fruits of violence and being permeated

by Christianity, descend to the level of the violated, and again

make place for new, less coarse violators than the preceding ones,

but coarser than those whom they oppress. Thus, despite the fact

that the power remains externally the same that it was, there is

with every change of men in power a greater increase in the number

of men who by experience are brought to the necessity of accepting

the Christian life-conception, and with every change the coarsest,

most cruel, and least Christian of all enter into the possession of

the power, but they are such as are constantly less coarse and cruel

and more Christian than their predecessors.

Violence selects and attracts the worst elements of society, works

them over, and, improving and softening them, returns them to

society.

Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of

the violence which is exercised by the power of the state and which

impedes the forward movement of humanity, takes possession of men

more and more. Christianity is penetrating into the consciousness of

men, not only despite the violence exerted by the power, but even by

means of it.

And thus the assertion of the defenders of the political structure

that, if the violence of the state be abolished, the evil men will

rule over the good, not only does not prove that this (the ruling

of the bad over the good) is dangerous, for it is precisely what is

taking place now, but, on the contrary, proves that the violence

of the state, which gives the bad a chance to rule over the good,

is the very evil which it is desirable to destroy, and which is

continuously destroyed by life itself.

"But even if it were true that the violence of the state will come

to an end when those who are in power shall become Christian enough

to renounce the power of their own choice, and there shall no longer

be found any men who are prepared to take their places, and if it is

true that this process is taking place," say the defenders of the

existing order, "when will that be? If eighteen hundred years have

passed and there are still so many volunteers who are ready to rule,

and so few who are ready to submit, there is no probability that

this will happen very soon, or ever at all.

"If there are, as there have been among all men, such as prefer to

refuse power rather than to use it, the supply of men who prefer

ruling to submitting is so great that it is hard to imagine the time

when it shall be exhausted.

"For this process of the Christianization of all men to take place,

for all men one after another to pass over from the pagan concept of

life to the Christian, and voluntarily renounce power and wealth,

and for no one to desire to make use of them, it is necessary that

not only all those rude, semisavage men, who are entirely incapable

of adopting Christianity and following it, and of whom there are

always such a great number amidst every Christian society, but also

all savage and non-Christian nations in general, of whom there are

so many outside the Christian society, should be made Christian. And

so, even if we admit that the process of Christianization will some

day be accomplished in the case of all men, we must assume, judging

from how much the matter has advanced in eighteen hundred years,

that this will happen in several times eighteen hundred years,--and

so it is impossible and useless to think now of the impossible

abolition of power, and all we should think of is that the power

should be vested in the best of hands."

Thus retort the defenders of the existing order. And this reflection

would be quite correct if the transition of men from one concept of

life to another took place only by force of the one process where

every man learns individually and one after another by experience

the vanity of power, and by an inner way reaches the Christian

truths.

This process takes place without cessation, and by this way men one

after another pass over to the side of Christianity.

But men pass over to the side of Christianity not by this inner path

alone; there is also an external method, with which the gradualness

of this transition is destroyed.

The transition of men from one structure of life to another does not

always take place in the manner in which the sand is poured out from

an hour-glass,--one kernel of sand after another, from the first

to the last,--but rather like water pouring into a vessel that is

immerged in the water, when it at first admits the water evenly and

slowly at one side, and then, from the weight of the water already

taken in, suddenly dips down fast and almost all at once receives

all the water which it can hold.

The same occurs with societies of men at the transition from one

concept, and so from one structure of life, to another. It is only

at first that one after another slowly and gradually receives the

new truth by an inner way and follows it through life; but after a

certain diffusion it is no longer received in an internal manner,

nor gradually, but all at once, almost involuntarily.

And so there is no truth in the reflection of the defenders of the

existing order that, if in the course of eighteen hundred years only

a small part of mankind has passed over to the side of Christianity,

it will take several times eighteen hundred years before the rest

of humanity will pass over to its side; there is no truth in it,

because with this reflection no attention is paid to any other than

the internal attainment of the truth, and the transition from one

form of life to another.

This other method of attaining a newly revealed truth and transition

to a new structure of life consists in this, that men do not attain

the truth simply because they perceive it with a prophetic feeling

or experience of life, but also because at a certain stage of the

dissemination of the truth all men who stand on a lower stage of

development accept it all at once, out of confidence in those who

have accepted it in an internal way, and apply it to life.

Every new truth, which changes the composition of human life and

moves humanity forward, is at first accepted by only a very small

number of men, who understand it in an internal way. The rest, who

out of confidence had accepted the previous truth, on which the

existing order is based, always oppose the dissemination of the new

truth.

But since, in the first place, men do not stand still, but

incessantly move forward, comprehending the truth more and more,

and approaching it with their lives, and, in the second place, all

of them, through their age, education, and race, are predisposed to

a gradation of men, from those who are most capable to comprehend

newly revealed truths in an internal way to those who are least

capable to do so, the men who stand nearest to those who have

attained the truth in an internal way one after another, at first

after long periods of time, and then more and more frequently,

pass over to the side of the new truth, and the number of men who

recognize the new truth grows larger and larger, and the truth grows

all the time more and more comprehensible.

The greater the number of men who attain the truth and the more the

truth is comprehensible, the more confidence is evoked in the rest

of the men, who in their ability to comprehend stand on a lower

stage, and the easier does the attainment of the truth grow for

them, and the greater is the number who make the truth their own.

Thus the movement keeps accelerating and accelerating, expanding and

expanding, like a snowball, until there germinates a public opinion

which is in accord with the new truth, and the remaining mass of men

no longer singly, but in a body, under the pressure of this force,

passes over to the side of the new truth, and a new structure of

life is established, which is in agreement with this truth.

Men who pass over to the side of a new truth which has reached a

certain degree of dissemination always do so all at once, in a mass,

and they are like that ballast with which every vessel is laden all

at once for its stable equilibrium and regular course. If there

were no ballast, the vessel would not stay in the water, and would

be changing its course with the least change in conditions. This

ballast, though at first it seems to be superfluous and even to

retard the ship's motion, is a necessary condition of its regular

motion.

The same is true of that mass of men who, not one by one, but

always all together, under the influence of a new public opinion,

pass over from one concept of life to another. By its inertia this

mass always retards the rapid, frequent transitions, unverified by

human wisdom, from one structure of life to another, and for a long

time retains every truth which, verified by a long experience of a

struggle, has entered into the consciousness of humanity.

And so there is no truth in the reflection that, if only a small,

a very small, part of humanity has attained the Christian truth in

the course of eighteen centuries, the whole of humanity will attain

it only in many, many times eighteen hundred years, that is, that

it is so far away that we of the present time need not even think

of it. It is untrue, because the men who stand on a lower stage of

development, those very nations and people whom the defenders of the

existing order represent as a hindrance for the realization of the

Christian structure of life, are the same people who always at once,

in a mass, pass over to the side of a truth which is accepted by

public opinion.

Therefore the change in the life of humanity, the one in consequence

of which men in power will renounce the power and among the men

who submit to power there will not be found such as are desirous

of seizing it, will not arrive when all men one after another

to the very last shall have consciously attained the Christian

life-conception, but when there arises a definite, easily

comprehensible Christian public opinion which will conquer all that

inert mass that is unable by an internal way to attain the truths

and so is always subject to the effect of public opinion.

But public opinion to arise and be diffused does not need hundreds

and thousands of years, and has the property of acting infectiously

upon people and with great rapidity embracing large numbers of men.

"But if it is even true," the defenders of the existing order will

say, "that public opinion, at a certain stage of its definiteness

and lucidity, is able to make the inert mass of men outside the

Christian societies,--the non-Christian nations,--and corrupt and

coarse men, who live within the societies, submit to it, what are

the symptoms that this Christian public opinion has arisen and may

take the place of violence?

"It is not right for us to take the risk and reject violence,

by which the existing order is maintained, and to depend on the

impalpable and indefinite force of public opinion, leaving it to the

savage men outside and inside the societies with impunity to rob,

kill, and in every way violate the Christians.

"If with the aid of the power we with difficulty eddy away from the

non-Christian elements, which are ever ready to inundate us and

destroy all the progress of the Christian civilization, is there,

in the first place, a probability that public opinion can take the

part of this force and make us secure, and, in the second, how are

we to find that moment when public opinion has become so strong

that it can take the place of the power? To remove the power and to

depend for our self-defence on nothing but public opinion means to

act as senselessly as would a man who in a menagerie would throw

away his weapons and let out all the lions and tigers from their

cages, depending on the fact that the animals in the cages and in

the presence of heated rods appeared tame.

"And so the men who have the power, who by fate or by God are placed

in the position of the ruling, have no right to risk the ruin of all

the progress of civilization, only because they would like to make

an experiment as to whether public opinion can take the place of the

protection of power, and so must not give up their power."

The French writer, Alphonse Karr, now forgotten, has said

somewhere, when speaking of the impossibility of abolishing capital

punishment, "_Que Messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner

l'exemple_," and many times after that have I heard the repetition

of this joke by men who thought that with these words they gave a

conclusive and clever argument against the abolition of capital

punishment. And yet it is impossible more lucidly to express

all that falseness of the argument of those who think that the

governments cannot give up their power so long as men are capable of

it, than by this very joke.

"Let the assassins," say the defenders of the violence of state,

"set us the example, by abolishing murder, and then we shall abolish

it." But the assassins say the same, only with greater right. The

assassins say, "Let those who have undertaken to teach and guide us

set us the example of abolishing murder, and then we will follow

them." And they do not say so for a joke, but in all seriousness,

because such indeed is the state of affairs.

"We cannot desist from violence, because we are on all sides

surrounded by violators."

Nothing in our day interferes more than this false consideration

with the forward motion of humanity and the establishment among it

of that structure of life which is already proper for its present

consciousness.

The men in power are convinced that it is only violence that moves

and guides men, and so they boldly use violence for the maintenance

of the present order of things. But the existing order is not

maintained through violence, but through public opinion, the effect

of which is impaired by violence.

Thus the activity of violence weakens and impairs precisely what it

intends to maintain.

Violence, in the best case, if it does not pursue only the personal

ends of men in power, always denies and condemns by the one

immovable form of the law what for the most part has been denied and

condemned before by public opinion, but with this difference, that,

while public opinion denies and condemns all acts which are contrary

to the moral law, embracing in its condemnation the most varied

propositions, the law which is supported by violence condemns and

persecutes only a certain, very narrow order of acts, thus, as it

were, justifying all the acts of the same order which have not

entered into its definition. Public opinion has ever since the time

of Moses considered avarice, debauchery, and cruelty to be evil,

and has condemned them; and this public opinion denies and condemns

every kind of a manifestation of avarice,--not only the acquisition

of another man's property by means of violence, deceit, and cunning,

but also a cruel usufruct of the same; it condemns every kind of

debauchery, be it fornication with a concubine, or a slave, a

divorced wife, or even one's own wife; it condemns every cruelty

which is expressed in assaults, in bad treatment, in the murder, not

only of men, but also of animals. But the law, which is based on

violence, prosecutes only certain forms of avarice, such as theft,

rascality, and certain forms of debauchery and cruelty, such as the

violation of marital fidelity, murders, crippling,--therefore, as

it were, permitting all those phases of avarice, debauchery, and

cruelty which do not fit in with the narrow definition, which is

subject to misinterpretations.

But not only does violence distort public opinion,--it also

produces in men that pernicious conviction that men are not moved

by spiritual force, which is the source of every forward movement

of humanity, but by violence,--that very action which not only does

not bring people nearer to truth, but always removes them from it.

This delusion is pernicious in that it compels men to neglect the

fundamental force of their life,--their spiritual activity,--and to

transfer all their attention and energy to the superficial, idle,

and for the most part harmful, activity of violence.

This delusion is like the one men would be in if they wished to make

a locomotive move by turning its wheels with their hands, forgetting

entirely that the prime cause of its motion is the expansion of

steam and not the motion of the wheels. Men who would turn the

wheels with their hands and with levers would produce nothing but

a semblance of motion, in the meantime bending the wheels and

interfering with the possibility of the locomotive's real motion.

It is this that men do when they want to move men by means of

external violence.

Men say that a Christian life without violence cannot be

established, because there are savage nations outside of Christian

society,--in Africa, in Asia (some people represent the Chinese as

such a peril for our civilization),--and there are such savage,

corrupt, and, according to the new theory of heredity, confirmed

criminals amidst Christian societies; and that violence is needed

for the purpose of keeping either from destroying our civilization.

But those savage men, outside and within the societies, with whom we

frighten ourselves and others, have never submitted to violence, and

are not even now conquered by it.

Nations have never subjugated other nations by violence alone.

If a nation which subjugated another stood on a lower stage of

development, there was always repeated the phenomenon that it did

not introduce its structure of life by means of violence, but,

on the contrary, always submitted to the structure of life which

existed in the conquered nation. If a nation, crushed by force, is

subjugated or close to subjugation, it is so only through public

opinion, and by no means through violence, which, on the contrary,

provokes the nation more and more.

If men have ever been subjugated by whole nations to a new religious

confession, and by whole nations have been baptized or have passed

over to Mohammedanism, these transformations did not take place

because men in power compelled them to do so (violence has, on the

contrary, more frequently encouraged the movements in the opposite

direction), but because public opinion compelled them to do so; but

the nations that were compelled by force to accept the faiths of

their conquerors have never accepted them.

The same is true in respect to those savage elements which exist

within the societies: it is not the increase nor the decrease of the

severity of punishments, nor the change of prisons, nor the increase

of the police, that diminish or increase the number of crimes,--it

is changed only in consequence of the change in public opinion. No

severities have eradicated duels and vendettas in some countries.

No matter how much the Circassians may be punished for theft, they

continue to steal out of bravado, because not one maiden will marry

a man who has not shown his daring, by stealing a horse, or at least

a sheep. If men shall stop fighting duels and Circassians shall stop

stealing, this will not be so because they are afraid of punishment

(the fear of being punished only increases the charm of the daring),

but because public opinion will be changed. The same is true in all

other crimes. Violence can never destroy what is accepted by public

opinion. On the contrary, public opinion need only be diametrically

opposed to violence to destroy its every action, as has always been

the case with every martyrdom.

We do not know what would happen if no violence were exerted against

hostile nations and criminal elements of society. But that the

employment of violence at the present time does not subjugate either

of them, that we know from protracted experience.

Indeed, how can we subjugate by force the nations whose whole

education, all whose traditions, even religious teaching, leads

them to see the highest virtue in a struggle with their enslavers

and in striving after liberty? And how are we forcibly to eradicate

crimes in the midst of our societies, when what by the governments

are considered to be crimes are considered to be virtues by public

opinion. It is possible by means of violence to destroy such

nations and such men, as is indeed done, but it is impossible to

subjugate them.

The judge of everything, the fundamental force which moves men and

nations, has always been the one invisible, impalpable force,--the

resultant of all the spiritual forces of a certain aggregate of men

and of all humanity, which is expressed in public opinion.

Violence only weakens this force, retards, and distorts it, and puts

in its place another activity, which is not only not useful, but

even harmful for the forward movement of humanity.

To subjugate to Christianity all the wild people outside the

Christian world,--all the Zulus, Manchurians, and Chinese, whom

many consider to be wild,--and the savages within the Christian

world, there is one, only one means,--the dissemination among these

nations of a Christian public opinion, which is established only

through a Christian life, Christian acts, Christian examples. And so

in order to conquer the nations which have remained unconquered by

Christianity, the men of our time, who possess one, and only one,

means for this purpose, do precisely the opposite of what might

attain their end.

To conquer to Christianity the wild nations, who do not touch us

and who do not in any way provoke us to oppress them, we--instead

of leaving them first of all alone, and, in case of necessity or

of a wish to get in closer relations with them, acting upon them

only through a Christian relation to them, through the Christian

teaching as proved by truly Christian acts of suffering, humility,

abstinence, purity, brotherhood, love--begin by this, that we open

among them new markets for our commerce, with nothing but our

advantage in view, seize their land, that is, rob them, sell them

wine, tobacco, opium, that is, corrupt them, and establish among

them our order, teach them violence and all its methods, that is,

the following of nothing but the animal law of struggle, below

which no man can descend, and we do everything which can be done

in order to conceal from them whatever of Christianity there is in

us. And after that we send to them about two dozen missionaries,

who prattle some hypocritical ecclesiastic absurdities and, in the

shape of incontrovertible proofs of the impossibility of applying

the Christian truths to life, adduce these our experiments at the

Christianization of the savages.

The same is true of the so-called criminals, who live within our

societies. To subjugate these men to Christianity, there is but

one, the only way,--the Christian public opinion, which can be

established among these men only by means of the true Christian

teaching, confirmed by a true, Christian example of life.

And so, to preach this Christian teaching and confirm it by a

Christian example, we establish among these people agonizing

prisons, guillotines, gallows, capital punishments, preparations

for murder, for which we use all our strength; we establish for

the common people idolatrous doctrines, which are to stupefy them;

we establish the governmental sale of intoxicants,--wine, tobacco,

opium; we establish even prostitution; we give the land to those who

do not need it; we establish spectacles of senseless luxury amidst

wretchedness; we destroy every possibility of every semblance of

a Christian public opinion; we cautiously destroy the established

Christian public opinion,--and then we quote these very men, who

have carefully been corrupted by ourselves, and whom we lock up,

like wild beasts, in places from which they cannot get away, and in

which they grow more bestial still, or whom we kill, as examples

of the impossibility of acting upon them otherwise than through

violence.

What takes place is like what happens when conscientious ignorant

physicians place a patient who has been cured by the force of Nature

under most unhygienic conditions and stuff him full of poisonous

medicines, and then claim that it was only thanks to their hygiene

and care that the patient did not die, whereas the sick man would

have been well long ago, if they had left him alone.

Violence, which is put forth as the instrument for maintaining the

Christian structure of life, not only does not produce this effect,

but, on the contrary, prevents the social structure from being what

it could and should be. The social structure is such as it is, not

thanks to violence, but in spite of it.

And so there is no truth in the assertion of the defenders of

the existing order, that, if violence barely keeps the evil

non-Christian elements of humanity from attacking us, the abolition

of violence and the substitution of public opinion for it will

not protect humanity. It is not true, because violence does not

protect humanity, but, on the contrary, deprives humanity of the

one possibility of a true protection through the establishment and

diffusion of the Christian public opinion as regards the existing

order of life. Only with the abolition of violence will Christian

public opinion cease to be corrupt, and receive the possibility

of an unimpeded diffusion, and men will not direct their strength

toward what they do not need, but toward the one spiritual force

which moves them.

"But how can we reject the visible, palpable protection of the

policeman with his revolver, and depend on something invisible,

impalpable,--the public opinion? Does it still exist, or not? Above

all else, we know the order of things in which we live. Be it good

or bad, we know its defects and are used to it; we know how to act,

what to do under present conditions; but what will happen when we

reject them and depend on something invisible, impalpable, and

entirely unknown?" And the uncertainty upon which men enter, when

rejecting the known order of things, seems terrible to them.

It is all very well to be afraid of the uncertainty, when our

position is firm and secure; but our position is not only not

secure,--we know for certain that we are standing on the brink of

perdition.

If we have to be afraid of something, let us be afraid of what is

really terrible, and not of what we only imagine to be terrible.

In our fear to make an effort to tear ourselves away from the

conditions which ruin us, only because the future is not quite

certain to us, we resemble the passengers of a sinking ship, who,

for fear of stepping into a boat which is to take them to the shore,

retreat to their cabins and refuse to come out from them; or those

sheep which, out of fear of the fire which has enveloped the whole

yard, press close under the penthouses and do not walk through the

open gates.

How can we, who are standing on the threshold of a war of

inner revolutions, which is terrifying by its wretchedness and

destructiveness, and in comparison with which, as those who are

preparing it say, the terrors of the year '93 will be play, speak

of a danger which is threatened us by the Dahomeans, the Zulus,

etc., who live far, far away, and do not think of attacking us, and

by those few thousands of robbers, thieves, and murderers, whom we

ourselves have stupefied and corrupted, and whose number is not

at all diminishing as the result of all our courts, prisons, and

capital punishments?

Besides, this fear of the abolition of the visible protection of

the policeman is preëminently a fear of city people, that is, of

people who live under abnormal and artificial conditions. Men who

live under normal conditions of life, not amidst cities, but amidst

Nature, struggling with it, live without this protection and know

how little violence can protect them against the actual dangers with

which they are surrounded. In this fear there is something morbid,

which depends mainly on those false conditions under which many of

us live and have grown up.

An alienist told me how one summer day he was accompanied by his

insane patients as far as the gate of the hospital which he was

leaving. "Come with me to the city," the doctor proposed to them.

The patients agreed to it, and a small crowd followed the doctor.

But the farther they proceeded along the street, where took place

the free motion of sound men, the more did they feel timid, and

the more did they press close to the doctor, retarding his walk.

Finally, they all began to ask him to take them back to the

hospital, to their senseless, but habitual mode of life, to their

guards, their blows, their long sleeves, their solitary cells.

Even thus men press close and hanker after their senseless structure

of life, their factories, courts, prisons, capital punishments,

wars, though Christianity calls them to freedom, to the free,

rational life of the future, the imminent age.

Men say, "By what shall we be made secure, when the existing order

is destroyed? What will the new orders be which will take the place

of those of the present time, and in what will they consist? So long

as we do not know how our life will be composed, we shall not move

on or budge from our place."

This demand is what the explorer of new countries might put forth,

in demanding a detailed description of the country into which he is

entering.

If the life of the individual man, in passing from one age to

another, were fully known to him, he would have no reason for

living. The same is true of the life of humanity: if it had a

programme of the life which awaits it as it enters upon its new age,

this would be the surest symptom that it is not living, does not

move on, but is whirling about in one spot.

The conditions of the new structure of life cannot be known to us,

because they have to be worked out by ourselves. In this alone does

life consist, namely, in recognizing the unknown and conforming our

activity to this new cognition.

In this does the life of every individual and the life of human

societies and of humanity consist.