Christianity or the State?--There are men who defend the
necessity of the State, and others who, on the same grounds,
deny this necessity--Neither can be proved by abstract
reasoning--The question decides the character of a man's
consciousness, which either allows or forbids him to participate
in the organization of the State--Realization of the uselessness
and immorality of taking part in the organization of the
State, which is contradictory to Christian doctrine, decides
this question for each one, regardless of the destiny of the
State--Argument of the defenders of the State, as a form of
social life indispensable for the defense of the good from the
wicked, until all nations, and all members of each nation,
shall have become Christians--The more wicked are always those
in power--History is but a recital of the usurpation of power
by the bad over the good--The acknowledgment by authority of
the necessity of struggle with evil by violence is equivalent
to self-destruction--The annihilation of violence is not
only possible, but is going on before our eyes--However, it
is not destroyed by State violence, but through those men
who, obtaining power by violence, and recognizing its vanity
and futility, benefit by experience and become incapable of
using violence--This is the process through which individual
men, as well as whole nations, have passed--It is in that
way that Christianity penetrates into the consciousness of
men, and not only is this accomplished despite the violence
used by authority, but through its agency, and therefore the
abolition of authority is not only without danger, but it goes
on continually as life itself--Objection of the defenders
of the State system that the diffusion of Christianity is
improbable--Diffusion of Christian truth interdicting violence
accomplished not only slowly and gradually, by the internal
method, by individual recognition of the truth, by prophetic
intuition, by the realizing of the emptiness of power and
abandonment of it by individual men, but accomplished also by
the external method, by which large numbers of men, inferior in
intellectual development, at once, in view of their confidence
in the others, adopt the new truth--The diffusion of truth at
a certain stage creates a public opinion, which compels the
majority of men who have previously opposed it to recognize
the new truth at once--Therefore a universal renunciation of
violence may very soon come to pass; namely, when a Christian
public opinion shall be established--The conviction of the
necessity of violence prevents the establishment of Christian
public opinion--Violence compels men to discredit the moral
force which can alone exalt them--Neither nations nor individual
men have been conquered by violence, but by public opinion,
which no violence can resist--It is possible to conquer savage
men and nations only by the diffusion of Christian public
opinion among them, whereas the Christian nations, in order
to conquer them, do everything in their power to destroy the
establishment of a Christian public opinion--These unsuccessful
experiments cannot be cited as a proof of the impossibility of
conquering men by Christianity--Violence which corrupts public
opinion only prevents the social organization from becoming
what it should be, and with the abolition of violence Christian
public opinion will be established--Whatever may take place
when violence has been abolished, the unknown future can be no
worse than the present, and therefore one need not fear it--To
penetrate to the unknown and move toward it is the essence of
life.
Christianity, faithfully interpreted, saps the foundations of the
civil law, and this was always understood from the very outset.
It was for this that Christ was crucified; and until men felt the
necessity for justifying the establishment of the Christian state,
they always accepted that interpretation. The cleverly constructed
theories intended to reconcile the doctrines of Christianity with
that of the State date back to the time when rulers of nations
adopted a nominal external Christianity. But in these times it
is impossible for a sincere and earnest man not to perceive the
incompatibility of the Christian doctrine of love, meekness of
spirit, and forgiveness of injuries, with the despotism, the
violence, and the wars of the State. The profession of true
Christianity not only forbids the recognition of the State, but
strikes at its very foundations.
But if it be true that Christianity is incompatible with the State,
one naturally asks which is the better adapted to promote the
well-being of mankind, the system prescribed by the State, or the
precepts of Christianity?
There are those who affirm that the State organization is the more
indispensable; they declare that its overthrow would check all
human progress, that no development is possible save through the
channels of civil government, and that all those evils which we
find prevailing among nations who live under State laws are not
the result of the organization, which permits progress and the
attainment of the highest degree of civilization.
They who hold these views quote, in support of their position,
certain historical, philosophical, and even religious arguments,
which seem to them irrefutable. But there are others who entertain
views diametrically opposed to these. For instance, they say
that the fact of the world having existed at one time without a
government, might be taken to prove the State to be only a temporary
condition; that the time was sure to come when men would require
a change, which time had now arrived. To support their theory,
these men in turn adduce historical, philosophical, and religious
arguments which seem to them irrefutable.
Volumes may be and have been written in defense of the former
position, and of late years a great deal has been written, and ably
written too, from the opposite standpoint.
It can neither be proved on the one hand, as the partizans of the
State claim, that its destruction would be followed by a general
upheaval, by robberies and murders, and by the nullification of all
social laws, and the return of man to a condition of barbarism; nor
on the other, as the enemies of the State affirm, that man has grown
so virtuous and well disposed that, preferring peace to enmity, he
will no longer rob and murder his neighbor; that he is quite able,
without State assistance, to establish a community, and conduct
his own affairs; and that the State itself, while assuming an air
of protection, is really exerting a demoralizing influence. It is
impossible to prove either one or the other by abstract arguments.
And naturally neither point can be proved by experience, as it is a
question first of all of getting the requisite experience.
Whether or not the time has arrived for abolishing the State is a
question which could not be answered were it not that we possess
other means that will assist us to settle it beyond dispute.
It needs no one to tell the young birds when it is time to burst the
shell; they know very well when there is no longer room for them
in the eggs, and begin of their own accord to break the shell and
leave it behind. So it is with this question of a change in human
affairs. Has the time come for men to cast aside the customs of the
State and establish a new order? When a man's inner consciousness
has so developed that he feels himself hampered by the requirements
of the State, and can no longer submit to the restraint, realizing
at the same time that he has ceased to need its protecting care,
the question whether or no men have matured sufficiently to enable
them to dispense with the State is disposed of without reference to
former arguments. A man who has outgrown the State can no more be
coerced into submission to its laws than can the fledgling be made
to reënter its shell.
"The State may have been necessary at one time, and for aught that
I know it may even now serve the purposes you mention," says the
man who holds the Christian life-conception. "I can only say that
_I_ have no need of it, nor can _I_ conform to its requirements.
You must decide for yourself whether it be advantageous or no. I
shall not attempt to generalize on the subject with the expectation
of proving my point. I only recognize what I need and what I don't
need; what I can, and what I cannot do. I know, as far as I am
myself concerned, that _I_ do not need to separate from the men of
other nations, and therefore I can neither recognize an exclusive
affiliation to this or that one, nor acknowledge myself the subject
of any one government. I need none of the institutions established
by the State, and therefore I am not willing to surrender the fruits
of my labor in the form of taxes to support institutions which I
believe to be not only unnecessary but positively injurious. I know
that _I_ need neither magistrates, nor tribunals founded on and
supported by violence, and therefore I can have nothing to do with
them; I know that _I_ feel no inclination to attack other nations
and put their citizens to death, neither do I wish to defend myself
against them by force of arms, and therefore I can take no part
in wars nor in preparations for wars. Doubtless there are men who
believe that all these things are an indispensable part of human
life,--I cannot argue with them,--but I know that for me they have
no meaning, and that I will have nothing to do with them.
"And this is not a matter of personal selection, but because I must
obey the commands of Him who has sent me into the world, and has
given me an unmistakable law by which I am to be guided through
life."
Whatever arguments may be advanced to prove that harm and probably
disaster will accrue from abolishing the authority of the State,
the man who has already outgrown the State ideal cannot possibly
be bound by it. And whatever arguments may be adduced to prove its
necessity, he can never return to it. He is like the young bird who
can never return to its outgrown shell.
"But granting this to be true," say the partizans of the existing
order, "we cannot dispense with the supremacy of the State until all
men are Christians, because even among those who claim the title
there are many who are very far from being Christians--evil-doers,
who seek their own gratification at the expense of their fellow-men,
and if the governments were overthrown, so far from improving the
condition of the people, it would greatly add to their miseries. The
subversion of the State would be a misfortune, not only where the
minority are true Christians, but even supposing the whole people to
be so; while the neighboring nations are still non-Christian, these
latter would make their lives a martyrdom by rapine and murder and
all manner of violence. It would serve only to provide the vicious
and unprincipled with an opportunity to oppress the innocent.
Therefore the State should not be abolished until all the wicked
have ceased from troubling, which will not happen just at present.
Hence, however much certain individual Christians may wish to escape
from the authority of the State, the greater good of the greater
number demands its preservation." So say the defenders of the State
principle. "If it were not," they say, "for State authority there
would be no protection against the malice and injustice of the
oppressor; that authority alone makes it possible to restrain the
wicked."
But in uttering these sentiments the partizans of the existing order
take it for granted that they have proved the truth of what they
assert. When they declare that the evil-doers would ride roughshod
over the defenseless and the innocent were it not for the authority
of the State, they imply that the governing power is vested at
the present time in a body of virtuous men, who control all the
wrong-doers. But this is a proposition which must be proved. It
could only be a correct statement if we happened to resemble the
inhabitants of China, where it is popularly believed, although
the belief is not justified by fact, that the good are always in
authority, because should it become known that the rulers are
no better than those over whom they rule, it is the duty of the
citizens to overthrow the government. But although this is supposed
to be one of the customs of China, it is not, nor would it be
possible for it to be so, since, in order to overthrow a criminal
government, one needs the power as well as the right. Even in China
this is a mere supposition, and in our own Christian land we have
never so much as dreamed of it. As far as we are concerned, there
is no reason to believe that power is in the hands of the virtuous
and high-minded, rather than in those of men who took it by violence
and have held it for themselves and their descendants. For surely
it would be impossible for a high-minded man to usurp authority by
violence and to continue to hold it.
In order to gain possession of power, and to retain it, one
must have a love for it, and the love of power is incompatible
with goodness; it accords with the opposite qualities of pride,
duplicity, and cruelty.
Both the origin and the maintenance of power depend upon the
exaltation of the individual, and the degradation of the people by
means of hypocrisy and fraud, by prisons, fortresses, and murders.
"If State authority were to be abolished, then would the more wicked
people dominate over the less wicked," say the upholders of State
organization. But if the Egyptians conquered the Hebrews, and the
Persians the Egyptians, and the Macedonians the Persians, and the
Romans the Greeks, and the barbarians the Romans, is it really
possible that the conquerors are always better than the conquered?
And so with political changes in the State; is the power always
transferred to the better men? When Louis XVI. was deposed, and
control passed into the hands of Robespierre, and when, later, he
was in turn succeeded by Napoleon, was it the better or the worse
man who held the power? Again, were they of Versailles or the
communists the better men? Charles the First or Cromwell? When Peter
III. reigned, or, after his murder, when Catharine ruled over one
part of Russia, and Pugatchov over the other--who then was good and
who was wicked?
All those in authority affirm that their office is required in
order that the unprincipled may be hindered from oppressing the
innocent, implying thereby that they themselves, being virtuous,
are protecting other virtuous men from the malice of the evil-doer.
To possess power and to do violence are synonymous terms; to do
violence means doing something to which the victim of violence
objects, and which the aggressor would resent were it directed
against himself. Therefore the possession of power really means
doing unto others what we should not like if it were done to
ourselves,--that is, harm.
Obedience signifies that a man holds patience to be better than
violence, and to choose patience rather than violence means to be
good, or, at least, not so wicked as those who do unto others what
they would not wish to have done to themselves.
Therefore all the probabilities are that those in authority were
in past times, as they are in present, worse men than those they
ruled over. Doubtless there are wicked men among those who submit
to authority, but it is impossible that the better men should rule
over the worse.
This might be thought in pagan times, when the definition of
goodness was inaccurate; but with the clear and exact conception of
the qualities of good and evil presented by Christianity before us
we cannot imagine it. If in the pagan world they who were more or
less good, and they who were more or less bad, might not be easily
distinguished, the characteristics of goodness and wickedness have
been so clearly defined by the Christian conception that it is
impossible to mistake them. According to the doctrine of Christ, the
good are those who submit and are long-suffering, who do not resist
evil by violence, who forgive injuries, and love their enemies; the
wicked are the vainglorious, who tyrannize, who are arrogant and
violent with others. Therefore, if we are guided by the doctrine of
Christ, we shall have no difficulty in deciding where to seek the
good and the wicked among rulers and subjects. It is even absurd to
speak of Christians as sovereigns or rulers.
The non-Christians--that is, those to whom life is but a matter of
temporal welfare--must always rule over the Christians, for whom
life means self-denial and disregard of temporal things.
And thus it has always been, and it has been manifested more and
more plainly as the Christian doctrine has become more clearly
defined and widespread.
The farther true Christianity extended, the firmer the hold it
gained on the consciousness of men, the less possible it became
for Christians to belong to the dominant class, and the easier for
non-Christians to gain the ascendancy.
"To abolish the supremacy of the State before all men have become
true Christians would only afford the wicked a chance to tyrannize
over the good and maltreat them with impunity," say the upholders of
the existing order.
It has always been the same from the beginning of the world until
this present time, and it always will be. _The wicked always
rule over the good and do violence to them_. Cain did violence
to Abel, the astute Jacob betrayed the trusting Esau, and was
himself deceived by Laban; Caiaphas and Pilate sat in judgment on
Christ; the Roman emperors ruled over Seneca, Epictetus, and other
high-minded Romans of those times; Ivan IV. with his Opritchniks,
the tipsy syphilitic Peter with his clowns, the prostitute Catharine
with her lovers, ruled over the industrious, God-fearing Russian
people of those times, and trampled upon them. William rules the
Germans, Stambulov the Bulgarians, and the Russian officials rule
over the Russian people; the Germans ruled over the Italians, and
now they rule over the Hungarians and the Slavs. The Turks ruled
over the Greeks and now rule over the Slavs, the English over the
Hindoos, the Mongolians over the Chinese.
So we see that whether the tyranny of the State is or is not to be
abolished, the position of the innocent, who are oppressed by the
tyrants, will not be materially affected thereby.
Men are not to be frightened by being told that the wicked will
oppress the good, because that is the natural course, and will never
change.
The whole of pagan history is a mere narrative of events wherein
the wicked have got the upper hand, and, once in power, by craft
and cruelty have kept their hold upon men, announcing themselves
meanwhile as the guardians of justice and the defenders of the
innocent against the oppressor. All revolutions are but the result
of the appropriation of power by the wicked and their rule over the
good. When the rulers say that if their power were to be destroyed
the evil-doers would tyrannize over the innocent, what they really
mean is that the tyrants in power are reluctant to yield to those
other tyrants who would fain wrest from them their authority. When
they protest that this authority of theirs, which is actually
violence, is necessary to defend the people against the possible
tyranny of others,[19] they are simply denouncing themselves. The
reason why violence is dangerous is that, whenever it is employed,
all the arguments which the perpetrators advanced in their own
defense may be used against them with even greater force. They talk
of the violence done in the past, and more frequently of future and
imaginary violence, while they themselves are the real offenders.
"You say that men committed robbery and murder in former times, and
profess anxiety lest all men be robbed or murdered unless protected
by your authority. This may or may not be true, but the fact that
you allow thousands of men to perish in prisons by enforced labor,
in fortresses, and in exile, that your military requisitions ruin
millions of families and imperil, morally and physically, millions
of men, this is not a supposititious but an actual violence, which,
according to your own reasoning, should be resisted by violence.
And therefore, by your own admission, the wicked ones, against whom
one should use violence, are yourselves." Thus should the oppressed
reply to their oppressors. And such are the language, the thoughts,
and the actions of non-Christians. Wherever the oppressed are more
wicked than the oppressor, they attack and overthrow them whenever
they are able; or else--and this is more frequently the case--they
enter the ranks of the oppressors and take part in their tyranny.
[19] Such declarations on the part of Russian authorities, who are
noted for their oppression of foreign nationalities,--the Poles, the
Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews,--strike one as both
amusing and artless. The Russian government, which has oppressed
its own subjects for centuries, and which has never protected the
Malo-Russians in Poland, the Latishi in the Baltic provinces,
nor the Russian peasants, of whom all sorts of people have taken
advantage for hundreds of years, suddenly becomes a champion of
the oppressed, of the very same people whom it still continues to
oppress.
Thus the dangers of which the defenders of State rights make a
bugbear--that if authority were overthrown the wicked would prevail
over the good--potentially exist at all times. The destruction of
State violence, in fact, never can, for this very reason, lead to
any real increase of violence on the part of the wicked over the
good.
If State violence disappeared, it is not unlikely that other acts
of violence would be committed; but the sum of violence can never be
increased simply because the power passes from the hands of one into
those of another.
"State violence can never be abolished until all the wicked
disappear," say the advocates of the existing order, by which
they imply that there must always be violence, because there will
always be wicked people. This could only prove true, supposing
the oppressors to be really beneficent, and supposing the true
deliverance of mankind from evil must be accomplished by violence.
Then, of course, violence could never cease. But as, on the
contrary, violence never really overcomes evil, and since there is
another way altogether to overcome it, the assertion that violence
will never cease is untrue. Violence is diminishing, and clearly
tending to disappear; though not, as is claimed by the defenders of
the existing order, in consequence of the amelioration of those who
live under an oppressive government (their condition really gets
worse), but because the consciousness of mankind is becoming more
clear. Hence even the wicked men who are in power are growing less
and less wicked, and will at last become so good that they will be
incapable of committing deeds of violence.
The reason why humanity marches forward is not because the inferior
men, having gained possession of power, reform their subjects
by arbitrary methods, as is claimed both by Conservatives and
Revolutionists, but is due above all to the fact that mankind in
general is steadily, and with an ever increasing appreciation,
adopting the Christian life-conception. There is a phenomenon
observable in human life in a manner analogous to that of boiling.
Those who profess the social life-conception are always ambitious
to rule, and struggle to attain power. In this struggle the most
gross and cruel, the least Christian elements of society, bubble up,
as it were, and rise, by reason of their violence, into the ruling
or upper classes of society. But then is fulfilled what Christ
prophesied: "Woe unto you that are rich! Woe unto you that are full!
Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" (Luke vi.
24-26). The men who have attained power, and glory, and riches, and
who have realized all their cherished aims, live to discover that
all is vanity, and gladly return to their former estate. Charles
V., Ivan the Terrible, Alexander I., having realized the evils of
power and its futility, renounced it because they recognized it as
a calamity, having lost all pleasure in the deeds of violence which
they formerly enjoyed.
But it is not alone kings like Charles V. and Alexander I. who
arrive at this disgust of power, but every man who has attained the
object of his ambition. Not only the statesman, the general, the
millionaire, the merchant, but every official who has gained the
position for which he has longed this half score of years, every
well-to-do peasant who has saved one or two hundred roubles, finds
at last the same disillusion.
Not only individuals, but entire nations, mankind as a whole, have
passed through this experience.
The attractions of power and all it brings--riches, honors,
luxury--seem to men really worth struggling for only until they are
won; for no sooner does a man hold them within his grasp than they
manifest their own emptiness and gradually lose their charm, like
clouds, lovely and picturesque in outline seen from afar, but no
sooner is one enveloped in them than all their beauty vanishes.
Men who have obtained riches and power, those who have struggled for
them, but more particularly those who have inherited them, cease to
be greedy for power or cruel in its acquisition.
Having learned by experience, sometimes in one generation, sometimes
in several, how utterly worthless are the fruits of violence, men
abandon those vices acquired by the passion for riches and power,
and growing more humane, they lose their positions, being crowded
out by others who are less Christian and more wicked; whereupon they
fall back into a stratum, which, though lower in the social scale,
is higher in that of morality, thus increasing the mean level of
Christian consciousness. But straightway, the worse, the rougher,
and less Christian elements rise to the surface, and being subject
to the same experience as their predecessors, after one or two
generations these men, too, recognize the hollowness of violent
ambitions, and, being penetrated with the spirit of Christianity,
fall back into the ranks of the oppressed. These are in turn
replaced by new oppressors, less despotic than the former, but
rougher than those whom they oppress. So that although the authority
is to all outward seeming unchanged, yet the number of those who
have been driven by the exigencies of life to adopt the Christian
life-conception increases with every change of rulers. They may be
more harsh, more cruel, and less Christian than their subjects;
but always men less and less violent replace their predecessors in
authority.
Violence chooses its instruments from among the worst elements
of society; men who gradually become leavened, and, softened and
changed for the better, are returned into society.
Such is the process by means of which Christianity takes fuller
possession of men day by day. Christianity enters into the
consciousness of men in spite of the violence of power, and even
owing to that violence.
The argument of the defenders of the State, that if power were
abolished the wicked would tyrannize over the good, not only fails
to prove that the domination of the wicked is a new thing to be
dreaded,--as it exists already,--but proves, on the contrary, that
the tyranny of the State, which allows the wicked to govern the
good, is itself the real evil which we ought to eradicate, and which
is constantly decreasing by the very nature of things.
"But if State violence is not to cease until the rulers have become
so far Christianized that they will renounce it of their own accord
and no others will be found to take their places,--if these things
are coming to pass," say the defenders of the existing order, "when
is it to happen? If 1800 years have passed, and still so many long
to rule, it is wholly improbable that we shall soon behold this
change, if it ever takes place at all.
"Even though there may be at present, as there always have been,
certain individuals who would not rule if they could, who do not
choose to benefit themselves in that way, still the number of those
who do prefer to rule rather than to be ruled is so great that it is
difficult to imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.
"In order to accomplish the conversion of all men, to induce each
one to exchange the pagan for the Christian life-conception,
voluntarily resigning riches and power, there being none left to
profit by these, it would be necessary that not only all the rude,
half-barbarous people, unfitted either to accept Christianity or
follow its precepts, who are always to be found in every Christian
community, should become Christians, but that all savage and
non-Christian nations, which are still numerous, should also become
Christian.
"Therefore were one to admit that the Christianizing process may
at some future time embrace all humanity, we must still take into
consideration the degree of progress that has been made in 1800
years, and realize that this can only happen after many centuries.
Hence we need not for the present trouble ourselves about the
overthrow of authority; all we have to do is to look to it that it
is in the best hands."
Thus reply the partizans of the existing system. And this reasoning
would be perfectly consistent, provided that the transition of men
from one life-conception to another were only to be effected by the
process of individual conversion; that is to say, that each man,
through his personal experience, should realize the vanity of power,
and apprehend Christian truth. This process is constantly going on,
and in that way, one by one, men are converted to Christianity.
But men do not become converted to Christianity merely in this way;
there is an exterior influence brought to bear which accelerates
the process. The progression of mankind from one system of life
to another is accomplished not only gradually, as the sand glides
through the hour-glass, grain by grain, until all has run out, but
rather as water which enters an immersed vessel, at first slowly,
at one side, then, borne down by its weight, suddenly plunges, and
at once fills completely.
And this is what happens in human communities during a change in
their life-conception, which is equivalent to the change from one
organization to another. It is only at first that men by degrees,
one by one, accept the new truth and obey its dictates; but after
it has been to a certain extent disseminated, it is accepted, not
through intuition, and not by degrees, but generally and at once,
and almost involuntarily.
And therefore the argument of the advocates of the present system,
that but a minority have embraced Christianity during the last
1800 years, and that another 1800 years must pass away before the
rest of mankind will accept it, is erroneous. For one must take
into consideration another mode, in addition to the intuitive of
assimilating new truth, and of making the transition from one mode
of life to another. This other mode is this: men assimilate a truth
not alone because they may have come to realize it through prophetic
insight or through individual experience, but the truth having been
spread abroad, those who dwell on a lower plane of intelligence
accept it at once, because of their confidence in those who have
received it and incorporated it in their lives.
Every new truth that changes the manner of life and causes humanity
to move onward is at first accepted by a very limited number, who
grasp it by knowledge of it. The rest of mankind, accepting on faith
the former truth upon which the existing system has been founded, is
always opposed to the spread of the new truth.
But as, in the first place, mankind is not stationary, but is
ever progressing, growing more and more familiar with truth and
approaching nearer to it in everyday life: and secondly, as all
men progress according to their opportunities, age, education,
nationality, beginning with those who are more, and ending with
those who are less, capable of receiving new truth--the men nearest
those who have perceived the truth intuitively pass, one by one,
and with gradually diminishing intervals, over to the side of the
new truth. So, as the number of men who acknowledge it increases,
the truth itself becomes more clearly manifested. The feeling of
confidence in the new truth increases in proportion to the numbers
who have accepted it. For, owing to the growing intelligibility of
the truth itself, it becomes easier for men to grasp it, especially
for those lower intellectually, until finally the greater number
readily adopt it, and help to found a new _régime_.
The men who go over to the new truth, once it has gained a certain
hold, go over _en masse_, of one accord, much as ballast is rapidly
put into a ship to maintain its equilibrium. If not ballasted,
the vessel would not be sufficiently immersed, and would change
its position every moment. This ballast, which at first may seem
superfluous and a hindrance to the progress of the ship, is
indispensable to its equipoise and motion.
Thus it is with the masses when, under the influence of some new
idea that has won social approval, they abandon one system to adopt
another, not singly, but in a body. It is the inertia of this mass
which impedes the rapid and frequent transition from one system of
life, not ratified by wisdom, to another; and which for a long time
arrests the progress of every truth destined to become a part of
human consciousness.
It is erroneous, then, to argue that because only a small percentage
of the human race has in these eighteen centuries adopted the
Christian doctrine, that many, many times eighteen centuries must
elapse before the whole world will accept it,--a period of time so
remote that we who are now living can have no interest in it. It is
unfair, because those men who stand on a lower plane of development,
whom the partizans of the existing order represent as hindrances to
the realization of the Christian system of life, are those men who
always go over in a body to a truth accepted by those above them.
And therefore that change in the life of mankind, when the powerful
will give up their power without finding any to assume it in their
stead, will come to pass when the Christian life-conception,
rendered familiar, conquers, not merely men one by one, but masses
at a time.
"But even if it were true," the advocates of the existing order
may say, "that public opinion has the power to convert the inert
non-Christian mass of men, as well as the corrupt and gross who are
to be found in every Christian community, how shall we know that
a Christian mode of life is born, and that State violence will be
rendered useless?
"After renouncing the despotism by which the existing order has been
maintained, in order to trust to the vague and indefinite force of
public opinion, we risk permitting those savages, those existing
among us, as well as those outside, to commit robbery, murder, and
other outrages upon Christians.
"If even with the help of authority we have a hard struggle against
the anti-Christian elements ever ready to overpower us, and destroy
all the progress made by civilization, how then could public
opinion prove an efficient substitute for the use of force, and
avail for our protection? To rely upon public opinion alone would
be as foolhardy as to let loose all the wild beasts of a menagerie,
because they seem inoffensive when in their cages and held in awe by
red-hot irons.
"Those men entrusted with authority, or born to rule over others by
the divine will of God, have no right to imperil all the results of
civilization, simply to make an experiment, and learn whether public
opinion can or cannot be substituted for the safeguard of authority."
Alphonse Karr, a French writer, forgotten to-day, once said, in
trying to prove the impossibility of abolishing the death penalty:
"Que Messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner l'exemple."
And I have often heard this witticism quoted by persons who really
believed they were using a convincing and intellectual argument
against the suppression of the penalty of death. Nevertheless, there
could be no better argument against the violence of government.
"Let the assassins begin by showing us an example," say the
defenders of government authority. The assassins say the same, but
with more justice. They say: "Let those who have set themselves up
as teachers and guides show us an example by the suppression of
legal assassination, and we will imitate it." And this they say, not
by way of a jest, but in all seriousness, for such is in reality the
situation.
"We cannot cease to use violence while we are surrounded by those
who commit violence."
There is no more insuperable barrier at the present time to the
progress of humanity, and to the establishment of a system that
shall be in harmony with its present conception of life, than this
erroneous argument.
Those holding positions of authority are fully convinced that men
are to be influenced and controlled by force alone, and therefore to
preserve the existing system they do not hesitate to employ it. And
yet this very system is supported, not by violence, but by public
opinion, the action of which is compromised by violence. The action
of violence actually weakens and destroys that which it wishes to
support.
At best, violence, if not employed as a vehicle for the ambition of
those in high places, condemns in the inflexible form a law which
public opinion has most probably long ago repudiated and condemned;
but there is this difference, that while public opinion rejects
and condemns all acts that are opposed to the moral law, the law
supported by force repudiates and condemns only a certain limited
number of acts, seeming thus to justify all acts of a like order
which have not been included in its formula.
From the time of Moses public opinion has regarded covetousness,
lust, and cruelty as crimes, and condemned them as such. It condemns
and repudiates every form that covetousness may assume, not only
the acquisition of another man's property by violence, fraud, or
cunning, but the cruel abuse of wealth as well. It condemns all
kinds of lust, let it be impudicity with a mistress, a slave, a
divorced wife, or with one's wife; it condemns all cruelty,--blows,
bad usage, murder,--all cruelty, not only toward human beings, but
toward animals. Whereas, the law, based upon violence, attacks only
certain forms of covetousness, such as theft and fraud, and certain
forms of lust and cruelty, such as conjugal infidelity, assault,
and murder; and thus it seems to condone those manifestations of
covetousness, lust, and cruelty which do not fall within its narrow
limits.
But violence not only demoralizes public opinion, it excites in the
minds of men a pernicious conviction that they move onward, not
through the impulsion of a spiritual power, which would help them
to comprehend and realize the truth by bringing them nearer to that
moral force which is the source of every progressive movement of
mankind,--but, by means of violence,--by the very factor that not
only impedes our progress toward truth, but withdraws us from it.
This is a fatal error, inasmuch as it inspires in man a contempt for
the fundamental principle of his life,--spiritual activity,--and
leads him to transfer all his strength and energy to the practice of
external violence.
It is as though men would try to put a locomotive in motion by
turning its wheels with their hands, not knowing that the expansion
of steam was the real motive-power, and that the action of the
wheels was but the effect, and not the cause. If by their hands
and their levers they move the wheels, it is but the semblance of
motion, and, if anything, injures the wheels and makes them useless.
The same mistake is made by those who expect to move the world by
violence.
Men affirm that the Christian life cannot be established save by
violence, because there are still uncivilized nations outside of the
Christian world, in Africa and Asia (some regard even the Chinese
as a menace of our civilization), and because, according to the new
theory of heredity, there exist in society congenital criminals,
savage and irredeemably vicious.
But the savages whom we find in our own community, as well as
those beyond its pale, with whom we threaten ourselves and others,
have never yielded to violence, and are not yielding to it now.
One people never conquered another by violence alone. If the
victors stood on a lower plane of civilization than the conquered,
they always adopted the habits and customs of the latter, never
attempting to force their own methods of life upon them. It is by
the influence of public opinion, not by violence, that nations are
reduced to submission.
When a people have accepted a new religion, have become Christians,
or turned Mohammedans, it has come to pass, not because it was
made obligatory by those in power (violence often produced quite
the opposite result), but because they were influenced by public
opinion. Nations constrained by violence to accept the religion of
the conqueror have never really done so.
The same may be said in regard to the savage elements found in
all communities: neither severity nor clemency in the matter of
punishments, nor modifications in the prison system, nor augmenting
of the police force, have either diminished or increased the
aggregate of crimes, which will only decrease through an evolution
in our manner of life. No severities have ever succeeded in
suppressing the vendetta, or the custom of dueling in certain
countries. However many of his fellows may be put to death for
thieving, the Tcherkess continues to steal out of vainglory. No girl
will marry a Tcherkess who has not proved his daring by stealing a
horse, or at least a sheep. When men no longer fight duels, and the
Tcherkess cease to steal, it will not be from fear of punishment
(the danger of capital punishment adds to the prestige of daring),
but because public manners will have undergone a change. The same
may be said of all other crimes. Violence can never suppress that
which is countenanced by general custom. If public opinion would but
frown upon violence, it would destroy all its power.
What would happen if violence were not employed against hostile
nations and the criminal element in society we do not know. But
that the use of violence subdues neither we do know through long
experience.
And how can we expect to subdue by violence nations whose education,
traditions, and even religious training all tend to glorify
resistence to the conqueror, and love of liberty as the loftiest
of virtues? And how is it possible to extirpate crime by violence
in the midst of communities where the same act, regarded by the
government as criminal, is transformed into an heroic exploit by
public opinion?
Nations and races may be destroyed by violence--it has been done.
They cannot be subdued.
The power transcending all others which has influenced individuals
and nations since time began, that power which is the convergence
of the invisible, intangible, spiritual forces of all humanity, is
public opinion.
Violence serves but to enervate this influence, disintegrating it,
and substituting for it one not only useless, but pernicious to the
welfare of humanity.
In order to win over all those outside the Christian fold, all the
Zulus, the Manchurians, the Chinese, whom many consider uncivilized,
and the uncivilized among ourselves, there is _only one way_. This
is by the diffusion of a Christian mode of thought, which is only to
be accomplished by a Christian life, Christian deeds, a Christian
example. But instead of employing this _one way_ of winning those
who have remained outside the fold of Christianity, men of our epoch
have done just the opposite.
In order to convert uncivilized nations who do us no harm, whom we
have no motive for oppressing, we ought, above all, to leave them
in peace, and act upon them only by our showing them an example of
the Christian virtues of patience, meekness, temperance, purity, and
brotherly love. Instead of this we begin by seizing their territory,
and establishing among them new marts for our commerce, with the
sole view of furthering our own interests--we, in fact, rob them;
we sell them wine, tobacco, and opium, and thereby demoralize them;
we establish our own customs among them, we teach them violence and
all its lessons; we teach them the animal law of strife, that lowest
depth of human degradation, and do all that we can to conceal the
Christian virtues we possess. Then, having sent them a score of
missionaries, who gabble an absurd clerical jargon, we quote the
results of our attempt to convert the heathen as an indubitable
proof that the truths of Christianity are not adaptable to everyday
life.
And as for those whom we call criminals, who live in our midst,
all that has just been said applies equally to them. There is
only _one way_ to convert them, and that is by means of a public
opinion founded on true Christianity, accompanied by the example of
a sincere Christian life. And by way of preaching this Christian
gospel and confirming it by Christian example, we imprison, we
execute, guillotine, hang; we encourage the masses in idolatrous
religions calculated to stultify them; the government authorizes the
sale of brain-destroying poisons--wine, tobacco, opium; prostitution
is legalized; we bestow land upon those who need it not; surrounded
by misery, we display in our entertainments an unbridled
extravagance; we render impossible in such ways any semblance of a
Christian life, and do our best to destroy Christian ideas already
established; and then, after doing all we can to demoralize men, we
take and confine them like wild beasts in places from which they
cannot escape, and where they will become more brutal than ever;
or we murder the men we have demoralized, and then use them as an
example to illustrate and prove our argument that people are only to
be controlled by violence.
Even so does the ignorant physician act, who, having placed his
patient in the most unsanitary conditions, or having administered
to him poisonous drugs, afterward contends that his patient has
succumbed to the disease, when had he been left to himself he would
have recovered long ago.
Violence, which men regard as an instrument for the support of
Christian life, on the contrary, prevents the social system from
reaching its full and perfect development. The social system is such
as it is, not because of violence, but in spite of it.
Therefore the defenders of the existing social system are
self-deceived when they say that, since violence barely holds the
evil and un-Christian elements of society in awe, its subversion,
and the substitution of the moral influence of public opinion, would
leave us helpless in face of them. They are wrong, because violence
does not protect mankind; but it deprives men of the only possible
chance of an effectual defense by the establishment and propagation
of the Christian principle of life.
"But how can one discard the visible and tangible protection of the
policeman with his baton, and trust to invisible, intangible public
opinion? And, moreover, is not its very existence problematical?
We are all familiar with the actual state of things; whether it be
good or bad we know its faults, and are accustomed to them; we know
how to conduct ourselves, how to act in the present conditions; but
what will happen when we renounce the present organization, and
confide ourselves to something invisible, intangible, and utterly
unfamiliar?"
Men dread the uncertainty into which they would plunge if they
were to renounce the familiar order of things. Certainly were our
situation an assured and stable one, it would be well to dread
the uncertainties of change. But so far from enjoying an assured
position, we know that we are on the verge of a catastrophe.
If we are to give way to fear, then let it be before something that
is really fearful, and not before something that we imagine may be
so.
In fearing to make an effort to escape from conditions that are
fatal to us, only because the future is obscure and unknown, we are
like the passengers of a sinking ship who crowd into the cabin and
refuse to leave it, because they have not the courage to enter the
boat that would carry them to the shore; or like sheep who, in fear
of the fire that has broken out in the farmyard, huddle together in
a corner and will not go out through the open gate.
How can we, who stand on the threshold of a shocking and devastating
social war, before which, as those who are preparing for it tell
us, the horrors of 1793 will pale, talk seriously about the danger
threatened by the natives of Dahomey, the Zulus, and others who live
far away, and who have no intention of attacking us; or about the
few thousands of malefactors, thieves, and murderers--men whom we
have helped to demoralize, and whose numbers are not decreased by
all our courts, prisons, and executions?
Moreover, this anxiety lest the visible protection of the police be
overthrown, is chiefly confined to the inhabitants of cities--that
is, to those who live under abnormal and artificial conditions.
Those who live normally in the midst of nature, dealing with its
forces, require no such protection; they realize how little avails
violence to protect us from the real danger that surrounds us. There
is something morbid in this fear, which arises chiefly from the
false conditions in which most of us have grown up and continue to
live.
A doctor to the insane related how, one day in summer, when he was
about to leave the asylum, the patients accompanied him as far as
the gate that led into the street.
"Come with me into town!" he proposed to them.
The patients agreed, and a little band followed him. But the farther
they went through the streets where they met their sane fellow-men
moving freely to and fro, the more timid they grew, and pressed more
closely around the doctor. At last they begged to be taken back to
the asylum, to their old but accustomed mode of insane life, to
their keepers and their rough ways, to strait jackets and solitary
confinement.
And thus it is with those whom Christianity is waiting to set
free, to whom it offers the untrammeled rational life of the
future, the coming century; they huddle together and cling to their
insane customs, to their factories, courts, and prisons, their
executioners, and their warfare.
They ask: "What security will there be for us when the existing
order has been swept away? What kind of laws are to take the place
of those under which we are now living? Not until we know exactly
how our life is to be ordered will we take a single step toward
making a change." It is as if a discoverer were to insist upon
a detailed description of the region he is about to explore. If
the individual man, while passing from one period of his life to
another, could read the future and know just what his whole life
were to be, he would have no reason for living. And so it is with
the career of humanity. If, upon entering a new period, a program
detailing the incidents of its future existence were possible,
humanity would stagnate.
We cannot know the conditions of the new order of things, because
we have to work them out for ourselves. The meaning of life is to
search out that which is hidden, and then to conform our activity to
our new knowledge. This is the life of the individual as it is the
life of humanity.
CHAPTER XI
CHRISTIAN PUBLIC OPINION ALREADY ARISES IN OUR SOCIETY, AND WILL
INEVITABLY DESTROY THE SYSTEM OF VIOLENCE OF OUR LIFE. WHEN THIS
WILL COME ABOUT
The condition and organization of our society is shocking; it
is upheld by public opinion, but can be abolished by it--Men's
views in regard to violence have already changed; the number of
men ready to serve the governments decreases, and functionaries
of government themselves begin to be ashamed of their position,
to the point of often not fulfilling their duties--These facts,
signs of the birth of a public opinion, which, in becoming
more and more general, will lead finally to the impossibility
of finding men willing to serve governments--It becomes more
and more clear that such positions are no longer needed--Men
begin to realize the uselessness of all the institutions of
violence; and if this is realized by a few men, it will later
be understood by all--The time when the deliverance will be
accomplished is unknown, but it depends on men themselves; it
depends on how much each man is willing to live by the light
that is within him.
The position of the Christian nations, with their prisons, their
gallows, their factories, their accumulations of capital, taxes,
churches, taverns, and public brothels, their increasing armaments,
and their millions of besotted men, ready, like dogs, to spring
at a word from the master, would be shocking indeed if it were the
result of violence; but such a state of things is, before all, the
result of public opinion; and what has been established by public
opinion not only may be, but will be, overthrown by it.
Millions and millions of money, tens of millions of disciplined
soldiers, marvelous weapons of destruction, an infinitely perfected
organization, legions of men charged to delude and hypnotize the
people,--this is all under the control of men who believe that this
organization is advantageous for them, who know that without it they
would disappear, and who therefore devote all their energy to its
maintenance. What an indomitable array of power it seems! And yet
we have but to realize whither we are fatally tending, for men to
become as much ashamed of acts of violence, and to profit by them,
as they are ashamed now of dishonesty, theft, beggary, cowardice;
and the whole complicated and apparently omnipotent system will die
at once without any struggle. To accomplish this transformation it
is not necessary that any new ideas should find their way into the
human consciousness, but only that the mist which now veils the true
significance of violence should lift, in order that the growing
Christian public opinion and methods may conquer the methods of the
pagan world. And this is gradually coming to pass. We do not observe
it, as we do not observe the movement of things when we are turning,
and everything around us is turning as well.
It is true that the social organization seems for the most part as
much under the influence of violence as it seemed a thousand years
ago, and in respect of armaments and war seems even more; but the
Christian view of life is already having its effect. The withered
tree, to all appearance, stands as firmly as ever; it seems even
firmer, because it has grown harder, but it is already rotten at the
heart and preparing to fall. It is the same with the present mode
of life based upon violence. The outward position of man appears
the same. There are the same oppressors, the same oppressed, but
the feeling of both classes in regard to their respective positions
has undergone a change. The oppressors, that is, those who take
part in the government, and those who are benefited by oppression,
the wealthy classes, do not constitute, as formerly, the _élite_
of society, nor does their condition suggest that ideal of human
prosperity and greatness to which formerly all the oppressed
aspired. Now, it often happens that the oppressors renounce of their
own accord the advantages of their position, choosing the position
of the oppressed, and endeavor, by the simplicity of their mode of
life, to resemble them.
Not to speak of those offices and positions generally considered
contemptible, such as that of the spy, the detective, the usurer,
or the keeper of a tavern, a great many of the positions held by
the oppressors, and formerly considered honorable, such as those of
police officers, courtiers, judges, administrative functionaries,
ecclesiastical or military, masters on a large scale, and bankers,
are not only considered little enviable, but are already avoided
by estimable men. Already there are men who choose to renounce
such once envied positions, preferring others which, although less
advantageous, are not associated with violence.
It is not merely such as these who renounce their privileges; men
influenced, not by religious motives, as was the case in former
ages, but by growing public opinion, refuse to accept fortunes
fallen to them by inheritance, because they believe that a man ought
to possess only the fruits of his own labor.
High-minded youths, not as yet depraved by life, when about to
choose a career, prefer the professions of doctors, engineers,
teachers, artists, writers, or even of farmers, who live by their
daily toil, to the positions of judges, administrators, priests,
soldiers in the pay of government; they decline even the position of
living on their income.
Most of the monuments at the present day are no longer erected in
honor of statesmen or generals, still less of men of wealth, but to
scientists, artists, and inventors, to men who not only had nothing
in common with government or authority, but who frequently opposed
it. It is to their memory that the arts are thus consecrated.
The class of men who will govern, and of rich men, tends every day
to grow less numerous, and so far as intellect, education, and
especially morality, are concerned, rich men and men in power are
not the most distinguished members of society, as was the case
in olden times. In Russia and Turkey, as in France and America,
notwithstanding the frequent changes of officials, the greater
number are often covetous and venal, and so little to be commended
from the point of view of morality that they do not satisfy even the
elementary exigencies of honesty demanded in government posts. Thus
one hears often the ingenuous complaints of those in government that
the best men among us, strangely enough as it seems to them, are
always found among those opposed to them. It is as if one complained
that it is not the nice, good people who become hangmen.
Rich men of the present day, as a general thing, are mere vulgar
amassers of wealth, for the most part having but little care beyond
that of increasing their capital, and that most often by impure
means; or are the degenerate inheritors, who, far from playing an
important part in society, often incur general contempt.
Many positions have lost their ancient importance. Kings and
emperors now hardly direct at all; they seldom effect internal
changes or modify external policy, leaving the decision of such
questions to the departments of State, or to public opinion. Their
function is reduced to being the representatives of state unity and
power. But even this duty they begin to neglect. Most of them not
only fail to maintain themselves in their former unapproachable
majesty, but they grow more and more democratic, they prefer even to
be bourgeois; they lay down thus their last distinction, destroying
precisely what they are expected to maintain.
The same may be said of the army. The high officers, instead of
encouraging the roughness and cruelty of the soldiers, which befit
their occupation, promote the diffusion of education among them,
preach humanity, often sympathize with the socialistic ideas of
the masses, and deny the utility of war. In the late conspiracies
against the Russian government many of those concerned were military
men. It often happens, as it did recently, that the troops, when
called upon to establish order, refuse to fire on the people.
The barrack code of ideas is frankly deprecated by military men
themselves, who often enough make it the subject of derision.
The same may be said of judges and lawyers. Judges, whose duty it
is to judge and condemn criminals, conduct their trials in such a
fashion as to prove them innocent; thus the Russian government,
when it desires the condemnation of those it wishes to punish,
never confides them to the ordinary tribunals; it tries them by
court-martial, which is but a parody of justice. The same may be
said of lawyers, who often refuse to accuse, and, twisting round
the law, defend those they should accuse. Learned jurists, whose
duty it is to justify the violence of authority, deny more and more
frequently the right of punishment, and in its place introduce
theories of irresponsibility, often prescribing, not punishment, but
medical treatment for so-called criminals.
Jailers and turnkeys in convict prisons often become the protectors
of those it is a part of their business to torture. Policemen
and detectives are constantly saving those they ought to arrest.
Ecclesiastics preach tolerance; they often deny the right of
violence, and the more educated among them attempt in their sermons
to avoid the deception which constitutes all the meaning of their
position, and which they are expected to preach. Executioners
refuse to perform their duty; the result is that often in Russia
death-warrants cannot be carried out for lack of executioners,
for, notwithstanding all the advantages of the position, the
candidates, who are chosen from convicts, diminish in number every
year. Governors, commissioners, and tax-collectors, pitying the
people, often try to find pretexts for remitting the taxes. Rich
men no longer dare to use their wealth for themselves alone, but
sacrifice a part of it to social charities. Landowners establish
hospitals and schools on their estates, and some even renounce their
estates and bestow them on the cultivators of the soil, or establish
agricultural colonies upon them. Manufacturers and mill-owners found
schools, hospitals, and savings-banks, institute pensions, and build
houses for the workmen; some start associations of which the profits
are equally divided among all. Capitalists expend a portion of their
wealth on educational, artistic, and philanthropic institutions for
the public benefit. Many men who are unwilling to part with their
riches during their lifetime bequeath them to public institutions.
These facts might be deemed the result of chance were it not that
they all originate from one source, as, when certain trees begin
to bud in the spring of the year, we might believe it accidental,
only we know the cause; and that if on some trees the buds begin to
swell, we know that the same thing will happen to all of them.
Even so is it in regard to Christian public opinion and its
manifestations. If this public opinion already influences some of
the more sensitive men, and makes each one in his own sphere decline
the advantages obtained by violence or its use, it will continue to
influence men more and more, until it brings about a change in their
mode of life and reconciles it with that Christian consciousness
already possessed by the most advanced.
And if there are already rulers who do not venture on any
undertaking on their own responsibility, and who try to be like
ordinary men rather than monarchs, who declare themselves ready to
give up their prerogatives and become the first citizens of their
country, and soldiers who, realizing all the sin and evil of war,
do not wish to kill either foreigners or their fellow-countrymen,
judges and lawyers who do not wish to accuse and condemn criminals,
priests who evade preaching lies, tax-gatherers who endeavor to
fulfil as gently as possible what they are called upon to do, and
rich men who give up their wealth, then surely it will ultimately
come to pass that other rulers, soldiers, priests, and rich men will
follow their example. And when there are no more men ready to occupy
positions supported by violence, the positions themselves will cease
to exist.
But this is not the only way by which public opinion leads toward
the abolition of the existing system, and the substitution of a new
one. As the positions supported by violence become by degrees less
and less attractive, and there are fewer and fewer applicants to
fill them, their uselessness becomes more and more apparent.
We have to-day the same rulers and governments, the same armies,
courts of law, tax-gatherers, priests, wealthy landowners,
manufacturers, and capitalists as formerly, but their relative
positions are changed.
The same rulers go about to their various interviews, they have the
same meetings, hunts, festivities, balls, and uniforms; the same
diplomatists have the same conversations about alliances and armies;
the same parliaments, in which Eastern and African questions are
discussed, and questions in regard to alliances, ruptures, "Home
Rule," the eight-hour day. Changes of ministry take place just as of
old, accompanied by the same speeches and incidents. But to those
who know how an article in a newspaper changes perhaps the position
of affairs more than dozens of royal interviews and parliamentary
sessions, it becomes more and more evident that it is not these
meetings, interviews, and parliamentary discussions that control
affairs, but something independent of all this, something which has
no local habitation.
The same generals, officers, soldiers, cannon, fortresses, parades,
and evolutions. But one year elapses, ten, twenty years elapse, and
there is no war. And troops are less and less to be relied on to
suppress insurrection, and it becomes more and more evident that
generals, officers, and soldiers are only figure-heads in triumphal
processions, the plaything of a sovereign, a sort of unwieldy and
expensive _corps-de-ballet_.
The same lawyers and judges, and the same sessions, but it becomes
more and more evident that as civil courts make decisions in a great
variety of causes without anxiety about purely legal justice, and
that criminal courts are useless, because the punishment does not
produce the desired result, therefore these institutions have no
other object than the maintenance of men incapable of doing other
things more useful.
The same priests, bishops, churches, and synods, but it becomes more
and more evident to all that these men themselves have long since
ceased to believe what they preach, and are therefore unable to
persuade any one of the necessity of believing what they no longer
believe themselves.
The same tax-gatherers, but more and more incapable of extorting
money from the people by force, and it becomes more and more evident
that, without such collectors, it would be possible to obtain by
voluntary contribution all that is required for social needs.
The same rich men, and yet it becomes more and more evident
that they can be useful only when they cease to be personal
administrators of their possessions, and surrender to society their
wealth in whole or part.
When this becomes as plain to all men as it now is to a few, the
question will naturally arise: Why should we feed and support all
those emperors, kings, presidents, members of departments, and
ministers, if all their interviews and conversations amount to
nothing? Would it not be better, as some wit expressed it, to set up
an india-rubber queen?
And of what use to us are armies, with their generals, their
musicians, their horses, and drums? Of what use are they when there
is no war, when no one wishes to conquer anybody else? And even if
there were a war, other nations would prevent us from reaping its
advantages; while upon their compatriots the troops would refuse to
fire.
And what is the use of judges and attorneys whose decisions in
civil cases are not according to the law, and who, in criminal ones,
are aware that punishments are of no avail?
And of what use are tax-gatherers who are reluctant to collect the
taxes, when all that is needed could be contributed without their
assistance?
And where is the use of a clergy which has long ceased to believe
what it preaches?
And of what use is capital in the hands of private individuals
when it can be beneficial only when it becomes public property?
Having once asked all these questions, men cannot but arrive at the
conclusion that institutions which have lost their usefulness should
no longer be supported.
And furthermore, men who themselves occupy positions of privilege
come to see the necessity of abandoning them.
One day, in Moscow, I was present at a religious discussion which
is usually held during St. Thomas's week, near the church in the
Okhotny Ryad. A group of perhaps twenty men had gathered on the
pavement, and a serious discussion concerning religion was in
progress. Meanwhile, in the nobles' club near at hand, a concert
was taking place, and a police-officer, having noticed the group of
people gathered near the church, sent a mounted policeman to order
them to disperse,--not that the police-officer cared in the least
whether the group stayed where it was or dispersed. The twenty
men who had gathered inconvenienced no one, but the officer had
been on duty all the morning and felt obliged to do something. The
young policeman, a smart-looking fellow, with his right arm akimbo
and a clanking sword, rode up to us, calling out in an imperative
tone: "Disperse, you fellows! What business have you to gather
there?" Every one turned to look at him, while one of the speakers,
a modest-looking man in a peasant's coat, replied calmly and
pleasantly: "We are talking about business, and there is no reason
why we should disperse; it might be better for you, my young friend,
if you were to jump off from your horse and to listen to us. Very
likely it would do you good;" and turning away he continued the
conversation. The policeman turned his horse without a word and rode
away.
Such scenes as this must be of frequent occurrence in countries
where violence is employed. The officer was bored; he had nothing
to do, and the poor fellow was placed in a position where he felt
in duty bound to give orders. He was deprived of a rational human
existence; he could do nothing but look on and give orders, give
orders and look on, although both were works of supererogation. It
will not be long before all those unfortunate rulers, ministers,
members of parliaments, governors, generals, officers, bishops,
priests, and even rich men, will find themselves--indeed they
have already done so--in precisely the same position. Their
sole occupation consists in issuing orders; they send out their
subordinates, like the officer who sent the policeman to interfere
with the people; and as the people with whom they interfere ask not
to be interfered with, this seems to their official intelligence
only to prove that they are very necessary.
But the time will surely come when it will be perfectly evident to
every one that they are not only useless, but an actual impediment,
and those whose course they obstruct will say gently and pleasantly,
like the man in the peasant's coat: "We beg that you will let us
alone." Then the subordinates as well as their instructors will find
themselves compelled to take the good advice that is offered them,
cease to prance about among men with their arms akimbo, and having
discarded their glittering livery, listen to what is said among men,
and unite with them to help to promote the serious work of the world.
Sooner or later the time will surely come when all the present
institutions supported by violence will cease to be; their too
evident uselessness, absurdity, and even unseemliness, will finally
destroy them.
There must come a time when the same thing that happened to the king
in Andersen's fairy tale, "The King's New Clothes," will happen to
men occupying positions created by violence.
The tale tells of a king who cared enormously for new clothes, and
to whom one day came two tailors who agreed to make him a suit woven
from a wonderful stuff. The king engaged them and they set to work,
saying that the stuff possessed the remarkable quality of becoming
invisible to any one unfit for the office he holds. The courtiers
came to inspect the work of the tailors, but could see nothing,
because these men were drawing their needles through empty space.
However, remembering the consequences, they all pretended to see the
cloth and to be very much pleased with it. Even the king himself
praised it. The hour appointed for the procession when he was to
walk wearing his new garment arrived. The king took off his clothes
and put on the new ones--that is, he remained naked all the while,
and thus he went in procession. But remembering the consequences, no
one had the courage to say that he was not dressed, until a little
child, catching sight of the naked king, innocently exclaimed, "But
he has nothing on!" Whereupon all the others who had known this
before, but had not acknowledged it, could no longer conceal the
fact.
Thus will it be with those who, through inertia, continue to
fill offices that have long ceased to be of any consequence,
until some chance observer, who happens not to be engaged, as the
Russian proverb has it, in "washing one hand with the other," will
ingenuously exclaim, "It is a long time since these men were good
for anything!"
The position of the Christian world, with its fortresses, cannon,
dynamite, guns, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories,
custom-houses, and palaces is monstrous. But neither fortresses nor
cannon nor guns by themselves can make war, nor can the prisons lock
their gates, nor the gallows hang, nor the churches themselves lead
men astray, nor the custom-houses claim their dues, nor palaces and
factories build and support themselves; all these operations are
performed by men. And when men understand that they need not make
them, then these things will cease to be.
And already men are beginning to understand this. If not yet
understood by all, it is already understood by those whom the rest
of the world eventually follows. And it is impossible to cease to
understand what once has been understood, and the masses not only
can, but inevitably must, follow where those who have understood
have already led the way.
Hence the prophecy: that a time will come when all men will hearken
unto the word of God, will forget the arts of war, will melt their
swords into plowshares and their lances into reaping-hooks;--which,
being translated, means when all the prisons, the fortresses, the
barracks, the palaces, and the churches will remain empty, the
gallows and the cannon will be useless. This is no longer a mere
Utopia, but a new and definite system of life, toward which mankind
is progressing with ever increasing rapidity.
But when will it come?
Eighteen hundred years ago Christ, in answer to this question,
replied that the end of the present world--that is, of the pagan
system--would come when the miseries of man had increased to their
utmost limit; and when, at the same time, the good news of the
Kingdom of Heaven--that is, of the possibility of a new system,
one not founded upon violence--should be proclaimed throughout the
earth.[20]
[20] Matt. xxiv. 3-28.
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of
heaven, but my Father only,"[21] said Christ. "Watch therefore: for
ye know not what hour your Lord doth come."
[21] Matt. xxiv. 36.
When will the hour arrive? Christ said that we cannot know. And for
that very reason we should hold ourselves in readiness to meet it,
as the goodman should watch his house against thieves, or like the
virgins who await with their lamps the coming of the bridegroom;
and, moreover, we should work with all our might to hasten the
coming of that hour, as the servants should use the talents they
have received that they may increase.[22]
[22] Matt. xxiv. 43; xxv. 1--13, 14-30.
And there can be no other answer. The day and the hour of the advent
of the Kingdom of God men cannot know, since the coming of that hour
depends only on men themselves.
The reply is like that of the wise man who, when the traveler asked
him how far he was from the city, answered, "Go on!"
How can we know if it is still far to the goal toward which humanity
is aiming, when we do not know how it will move toward it; that it
depends on humanity whether it moves steadily onward or pauses,
whether it accelerates or retards its pace.
All that we can know is what we who form humanity should or should
not do in order to bring about this Kingdom of God. And that we all
know; for each one has but to begin to do his duty, each one has but
to live according to the light that is within him, to bring about
the immediate advent of the promised Kingdom of God, for which the
heart of every man yearns.
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION
"REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND!"
1
Encounter with a train carrying soldiers to establish order
among famine-stricken peasants--The cause of the disorder--How
the mandates of the higher authorities are carried out in case
of peasants' resistance--The affair at Orel as an example of
violence and murder committed for the purpose of asserting the
rights of the rich--All the advantages of the rich are founded
on like acts of violence.
2
The Tula train and the behavior of the persons composing it--How
men can behave as these do--The reasons are neither ignorance,
nor cruelty, nor cowardice, nor lack of comprehension or of
moral sense--They do these things because they think them
necessary to maintain the existing system, to support which
they believe to be every man's duty--On what the belief of the
necessity and immutability of the existing order of things is
founded--For the upper classes it is based on the advantages
it affords them--But what compels men of the lower classes to
believe in the immutability of this system, when they derive
no advantage from it, and maintain it with acts contrary to
their conscience?--The reason lies in the deceit practised by
the upper classes upon the lower in regard to the necessity
of the existing order, and the legitimacy of acts of violence
for its maintenance--General deception--Special deception--The
conscription.
3
How men reconcile the legitimacy of murder with the precepts of
morality, and how they admit the existence in their midst of a
military organization for purposes of violence which incessantly
threatens the safety of society--Admitted only by the powers
for whom the present organization is advantageous--Violence
sanctioned by the higher authorities and carried out by the
lower, notwithstanding the knowledge of its immorality, because,
owing to the organization of the State, the moral responsibility
is divided among a large number of participants, each of whom
considers some other than himself responsible--Moreover, the
loss of consciousness of moral responsibility is also due to a
mistaken opinion as to the inequality of men, the consequent
abuse of power by the authorities, and servility of the lower
classes--The condition of men who commit acts contrary to their
conscience is like the condition of a hypnotized person acting
under the influence of suggestion--In what does submission to
the suggestion of the State differ from submission to men of a
higher order of consciousness or to public opinion?--The present
system, which is the outcome of ancient public opinion, and
which is already in contradiction to the modern, is maintained
only through torpor of conscience, induced by auto-suggestion
among the upper classes, and by the hypnotization of the
lower--The conscience or intelligent consciousness of these
men may awaken, and there are instances when it does awaken;
therefore it cannot be said that any one of them will, or will
not, do what he sets out to do--Everything depends on the degree
of comprehension of the illegitimacy of the acts of violence,
and this consciousness in men may either awaken spontaneously or
be roused by those already awakened.
4
Everything depends upon the strength of conviction of each
individual man in regard to Christian truth--But the advanced
men of the present day consider it unnecessary to explain
and profess Christian truth, regarding it sufficient for the
improvement of human life to change its outward conditions
within the limits allowed by power--Upon this scientific theory
of hypocrisy, which has taken the place of the hypocrisy of
religion, men of the wealthy classes base the justification of
their position--In consequence of this hypocrisy, maintained by
violence and falsehood, they can pretend before each other to
be Christians, and rest content--The same hypocrisy allows men
who preach the Christian doctrine to take part in a _régime_
of violence--No external improvements of life can make it
less miserable; its miseries are caused by disunion; disunion
springs from following falsehood instead of truth--Union
is possible only in truth--Hypocrisy forbids such a union,
for while remaining hypocrites, men conceal from themselves
and others the truth they know--Hypocrisy changes into evil
everything destined to ameliorate life--It perverts the
conception of right and wrong, and therefore is a bar to the
perfection of men--Acknowledged malefactors and criminals do
less harm than those who live by legalized violence cloaked by
hypocrisy--All recognize the iniquity of our life, and would
long since have modified it, if it were not covered by the cloak
of hypocrisy--But it seems as if we had reached the limits of
hypocrisy, and have but to make an effort of consciousness in
order to awaken--like the man who has nightmare--to a different
reality.
5
Can man make this effort?--According to the existing
hypocritical theory, man is not free to change his life--He
is not free in his acts, but is always free to acknowledge or
disregard certain truths already known to him--The recognition
of truth is the cause of action--The cause of the apparent
insolvability of the question of man's freedom--It lies only
in the acknowledgment of the truth revealed unto him--No other
freedom exists--The acknowledgment of the truth gives freedom,
and points the way in which a man, willingly or unwillingly,
must walk--The recognition of truth and of true freedom allows
man to become a participant of the work of God, to be not the
slave but a creator of life--Men have but to forego the attempt
to improve the external conditions of life, and direct all their
energies toward the recognition and profession of the truth
that is known to them, and the present painful system of life
will vanish forthwith, and that portion of the Kingdom of God
which is accessible to men would be established--One has only to
cease lying and shamming to accomplish this--But what awaits us
in the future?--What will happen to mankind when they begin to
obey the dictates of their conscience, and how will they exist
without the customary conditions of civilization?--Nothing truly
good and beneficial can perish because of the realization of the
truth, but will only increase in strength when freed from the
admixture of falsehood and hypocrisy.
6
Our system of life has reached the limit of misery, and cannot
be ameliorated by any pagan reorganization--All our life, with
its pagan institutions, is devoid of meaning--Are we obeying
the will of God in maintaining our present privileges and
obligations?--We are in this position, not because such is
the law of the universe, that it is inevitable, but because
we wish it, because it is advantageous for some of us--All
our consciousness contradicts this, and our deliverance
consists in acknowledging the Christian truth, not to do to
one's neighbor that which one would not have done to one's
self--As our obligations in regard to ourselves should be
subordinate to our obligations to others, so in like manner our
obligations to others should be subordinate to our obligations
to God--Deliverance from our position consists, if not in
giving up our position and its rights at once, at least in
acknowledging our guilt, and neither lying nor trying to justify
ourselves--The true significance of our life consists in knowing
and professing the truth, whereas our approval of, and our
activity in, the service of the State takes all meaning from
life--God demands that we serve Him, that is, that we seek to
establish the greatest degree of union among all human beings,
which union is possible only in truth.
I was just putting the finishing touches to this two years' work
when, on the 9th day of September,[23] I had occasion to go by
rail to visit districts in the governments of Tula and Ryazan,
where certain peasants were suffering from last year's famine, and
others were enduring still greater suffering from the same causes
this year.[24] At one of the stations the train in which I was a
passenger met the express, which carried the Governor and troops
supplied with rods and loaded rifles for torturing and murdering the
famine-stricken peasants.
[23] 1892.--Tr.
[24] 1893.
Although corporal punishment was legally abolished in Russia
thirty years ago, the custom of flogging as a means of making the
decisions of authority respected has been revived, and has of late
been frequently employed. I had heard of it, had read in the papers
of the frightful tortures of which the Governor of Nijni-Novgorod,
Baranov, has gone so far as to boast, and of the tortures that have
been inflicted in Tchernigov, Tambov, Saratov, Astrakhan, and Orel,
but I had never yet witnessed, as I did now, how these things were
actually done.
And I myself saw well-meaning Russians, penetrated with the spirit
of Christ, but armed with muskets and carrying rods, on their way to
murder and torture their starving brothers.
The pretext was as follows:--
On the estate of a rich landowner, upon a piece of ground held by
him in common with the peasants, a forest had been allowed to grow.
(When I say that the forest "grew," I mean that the peasants had
not only planted it, but had continued to take care of it.) They
had always had the use of it, and therefore looked upon it as their
own, or at least as common property; but the landowner, confiscating
it entirely to himself, began to cut down the trees. The peasants
lodged a complaint. The judge of the lower court pronounced an
illegal decision (I call it illegal on the authority of the
Procureur[25] and the Governor, who surely ought to understand the
case) in favor of the landowner. The higher courts, as well as the
Senate, although they could see that the case had been unfairly
tried, confirmed the decision, and the wood was awarded to the
landowner, who continued to fell the trees. But the peasants,
believing it impossible that such an injustice could be perpetrated
by the higher magistrates, refused to submit to the decision, and
drove away the workmen sent to cut down the trees, saying that the
forest belonged to them, and that they would appeal to the Czar
himself before they would allow it to be touched.
[25] Attorney-General.
The case was reported to St. Petersburg, from whence the Governor
received the order to enforce the decision of the courts, and in
order to execute the command, asked for troops.
Hence these soldiers who, armed with bayonets and provided with
cartridges and rods expressly prepared for the occasion and stored
in one of the vans, were on their way to enforce the decision of
the higher authorities. The execution of an order from the ruling
powers can be accomplished either by threats of torture and death,
or by the enforcement of those threats, according to the degree of
resistance on the part of the people.
If, for instance, in Russia (it is practically the same in other
lands where state authority and the rights of ownership exist), the
peasants offer to resist, the result is as follows: The superior
officer makes a speech and orders them to obey. The excited crowd,
accustomed to be duped by those in high places, understands not
a word that the representative of authority is saying in his
official, conventional language, and is by no means pacified.
Whereupon the commanding officer declares that unless they submit
and disperse, he will be forced to have recourse to arms. If the
crowd still refuses to yield and does not disperse, he orders his
men to load the muskets and to fire over their heads, and then, if
the peasants still stand their ground, he orders the soldiers to
aim at the crowds; they fire, and men fall wounded and killed in
the street. The crowd is dispersed, the soldiers, carrying out the
orders of their commanders, having laid hands upon those whom they
suppose to be the chief instigators, and arrested them. The dying,
stained with blood, the wounded, mutilated, and dead, among whom
are often women and children, are picked up. The dead are buried,
the wounded sent to the hospitals. Those who are supposed to be the
ringleaders are taken to the city and court-martialed, and if proved
that they have used violence, they are summarily hung. This has
happened in Russia repeatedly, and similar scenes must take place
wherever the system of government is based upon violence. Such is
the course adopted in cases of revolt.
If, on the other hand, the peasants submit, the scene that ensues
is entirely original and peculiarly Russian. The Governor, on his
arrival at the place, either quarters the soldiers in the different
houses of the village, where their maintenance ruins the peasants,
or, satisfied by threatening the people, he graciously pardons
them and departs. Or, as more frequently happens, he addresses the
multitude, upbraids it for disobedience, and announces that the
ringleaders must be punished; he seizes a certain number of men
considered as such, and without any form of trial causes them to be
beaten with rods in his presence.
In order to give an idea of the manner in which such an affair
is conducted, I will describe an instance of the kind which
happened in Orel, which was approved by the higher authorities.
Like the landowner in Tula, the landed proprietor at Orel chose
to take possession of the peasants' property, and here, too, as
in the former instance, the peasants resisted. In this case, the
landowner, without the consent of the peasants, wished to dam up,
for the benefit of his mill, a flow of water which supplied the
meadows. The peasants resisted this.
The landlord lodged a complaint with the rural commissary, who
illegally (as was afterward admitted by the court) decided the case
in favor of the landowner, giving him leave to divert the water. The
landowner sent workmen to close the channel through which the water
descended. The peasants, excited at this unfair judgment, sent their
women to prevent the landowner's men from damming the channel. The
women proceeded to the dam, upset the carts, and drove the workmen
away. The landowner entered a complaint against them for committing
a lawless act. The rural commissary gave the order to arrest and
lock up in the village jail one woman out of every family,--an order
rather difficult to execute, since each family included several
women; and as it was impossible to tell which of them to arrest, the
police could not fulfil the order. The landowner complained to the
Governor of the laxity of the police. The Governor, without stopping
to consider the case, gave strict orders to the _Ispravnik_ to
carry out at once the orders of the rural commissary. In obedience
to his superior the _Ispravnik_ arrived in the village, and with
that contempt for the individual peculiar to Russian authorities,
ordered the police to seize the first women they could. Disputes
and resistance arose. The _Ispravnik_, paying no attention to
this, persisted in his order that the police should take one
woman, innocent or guilty, from every household, and put her under
arrest. The peasants defended their wives and mothers; they refused
to give them up, and resisted the police and the _Ispravnik_.
Thus another and a greater offense was committed,--resistance to
authority,--which was at once reported in town. Then the Governor,
just as I saw the Governor of Tula, with a battalion of soldiers
supplied with rods and muskets, backed by all due accessories of
telegraph and telephone, accompanied by a learned physician who was
to superintend the flogging from a medical standpoint, started
on an express train for the spot, like the modern Genghis Khan
predicted by Herzen. In the _Volostnoye Pravlenie_[26] were the
soldiers, a detachment of police with their revolvers suspended on
red cords, the principal peasants of the neighborhood, and the men
accused. Around them had collected a crowd of perhaps a thousand.
[26] House of the rural communal government.
Driving up to the house of the _Volostnoye Pravlenie_, the Governor
alighted from his carriage and delivered an address, which had been
prepared in advance, after which he inquired for the criminals, and
ordered a bench to be brought. No one understood what he meant until
the policeman, who always accompanied the Governor and made all the
arrangements for the punishments which had already been enforced
several times in the government of Orel, explained that the bench
was to be used for flogging. This bench and the rods that had been
brought by the party were both produced. The executioners had been
previously selected from certain horse-thieves taken from the same
village, the military having refused to do the business.
When all was ready the Governor bade the first of the twelve men who
were pointed out to him by the landowner as the ringleaders to step
forward. It so happened that he was the father of a family, a man
forty-five years of age, respected in the community, whose rights he
had manfully defended.
He was led to the bench, stripped, and ordered to lie down.
He would have begged for mercy, but realizing how little it
would avail, he made the sign of the cross and stretched himself
out on the bench. Two policemen held him down, and the learned
doctor stood by, ready in case of need to give his scientific
assistance. The executioners having spat upon their hands, swung
the rods, and the flogging began. The bench, it seemed, was too
narrow, and it was found difficult to keep the writhing victim,
whose muscles twitched convulsively, from falling off. Then the
Governor ordered to be brought another bench, to which a plank
was adjusted in such a way as to support it. The soldiers, ever
ready with their continual salutes and responses of "Yes, your
Excellency," swiftly and obediently executed the orders, while in
the meantime the half-naked, pale, and suffering man, trembling,
with contracted brows and downcast eyes, stood by waiting. When the
bench was readjusted, he was again stretched out upon it, and the
horse-stealers renewed their blows. His back, his legs, and even his
sides were covered with bleeding wounds, and every blow was followed
by the muffled groan which he could no longer repress. In the crowd
that stood by one could hear the sobs of the wife and mother, the
children, and the kinsfolk of the man, as well as of all who had
been called to witness the punishment.
The wretched Governor, intoxicated with power, who had no doubt
convinced himself of the necessity for this performance, counted the
strokes on his fingers, while he smoked cigarette after cigarette,
for the lighting of which several obliging persons hastened to offer
him a burning match.
After fifty blows had been given, the peasant lay motionless,
without uttering a sound, and the doctor, who had been educated in
a government school that he might devote his scientific knowledge
to the service of his country and his sovereign, approached the
tortured man, felt his pulse, listened to the beating of his heart,
and reported to the representative of authority that the victim had
become unconscious, and declared that, from a scientific point of
view, it might prove dangerous to prolong the punishment. But the
unfortunate Governor, utterly intoxicated by the sight of blood,
ordered the flogging to go on until seventy strokes had been given,
the number which he for some reason deemed necessary. After the
seventieth blow the Governor said:--
"That will do! Now bring on the next one!"
They raised the mutilated and unconscious man, with his swollen
back, and carried him away, and the next was brought forward. The
sobs and groans of the crowd increased, but the tortures were
continued.
So it went on until each of the twelve men had received seventy
strokes. They begged for mercy, they groaned and screamed. The
sobs and moans of the women grew louder and more heartrending, and
the faces of the men of the crowd more gloomy. But there stood the
troops, and the torture did not cease until it had seemed sufficient
to the unfortunate, half-intoxicated, erring man called the Governor.
Not only did the magistrates, the officers, and the soldiers
sanction this act by their presence, but they took part in it,
preventing the crowd from interfering with the order of its
execution.
When I asked one of the chief officials why these tortures were
inflicted after the men had already submitted, he replied, with
the significant air of a man who understands all the fine points
of political wisdom, that it was done because it had been proved
by experience that if the peasants are not punished they will
soon begin again to oppose the decrees of authority, and that the
punishment of a few strengthens forever the power of authority.
And now I saw the Governor of Tula, with his clerks, officers, and
soldiers, on his way to perform a similar act. Once more by murder
or torture the sentence of the higher authorities was to be carried
out,--a sentence whose object was to enable a young landowner, the
possessor of a yearly income of 100,000 roubles, to receive 3000
more for a tract of wood of which he had basely defrauded a whole
community of needy and starving peasants, the price of which he
would squander in a few weeks in the restaurants of St. Petersburg,
Moscow, and Paris. Such was the errand of the men I met.
It would seem as if there must be some purpose in this encounter,
when, after two years of incessant contemplation, of continuous
thought in one direction, fate should, for the first time in
my life, bring me face to face with this phenomenon, a living
illustration of the theory I have so long cherished; namely, that
the entire organization of our life rests, not on any principle of
justice, as men who occupy and enjoy advantageous positions under
the existing system like to imagine, but on the rudest and most
barefaced violence, on the murder and torture of human beings.
Those who possess large estates and large capital, or who receive
high salaries collected from the needy working-classes, from the
people who often lack the necessaries of life; merchants, clerks,
doctors, lawyers, artists, scientists, writers, coachmen, cooks, and
valets, who earn their living in the service of rich men,--fondly
believe that the privileges which they enjoy are not the outcome
of violence, but the natural result of a voluntary interchange of
services; that these privileges are by no means the result of the
outrages and floggings endured by their fellow-men, such as took
place last summer, in Russia, in Orel and elsewhere, as the like
took place in many parts of Europe and America. They prefer to
believe that the privileges they enjoy are the spontaneous result
of a mutual agreement among men; that violence is only the natural
result of certain universal and superior laws, judicial, political,
or economic. They try not to see that the privileges they possess
are only held by them in consequence of some circumstance, not
unlike that which compelled the peasants, who had tended the growing
forest and greatly needed it, to surrender it to the rich landowner,
who had taken no pains to preserve it, and who did not require
it for his own use; men who will either be flogged or murdered
if they refuse to surrender it. Now, if it is an undeniable fact
that the mill in Orel was made to yield an increased income to the
proprietor, and that the forest raised by the peasants was given to
the landowner only because of the flogging and the executions either
threatened or actually suffered, then it must be equally evident
that all the other exclusive rights of the rich, which deprive the
poor of the bare necessaries of life, rest on the same basis.
If the peasants who need land in order to support their families
may not cultivate the land around them, and if land sufficient to
feed a thousand families is in the hands of one man, a Russian, an
Englishman, an Austrian, a rich landowner of whatever nationality;
and if the merchant who buys grain from the needy grower keeps
it in his warehouses in the midst of a destitute and famishing
population, or sells it for three times its value to those of whom
he bought it at the lowest price,--it evidently springs from the
same cause.
And if, beyond a certain line called the frontier, one man is not
allowed to purchase certain goods without paying duties to other
men who have nothing to do with their production, and if a man is
obliged to part with his last cow in order to pay taxes which are
distributed by the government among its officials, or used for
the support of soldiers who may kill the taxpayers, it would seem
evident that all this is not the result of certain abstract rights,
but of incidents like those which may even now be going on in the
government of Tula, which in one form or another occur periodically
all the world over, wherever state organization exists, and wherever
there are rich and poor.
Owing to the fact that outrage and murder do not accompany all
social relations founded on violence, those who possess the
exclusive privileges of the governing classes assure themselves and
others that the advantages which they enjoy are not the result of
violence and bloodshed, but derived from certain vague and abstract
rights. Still it ought to be evident that if those men, who realize
the injustice of it all (as is the case with the working-classes at
the present day), continue to surrender the greater part of their
earnings to the capitalist and the landowner, and if they pay taxes,
knowing that such taxes are not put to a good use, they do this, not
because they acknowledge the justice of certain abstract rights,
whose meaning is unknown to them, but only because they know that
they will be whipped and put to death if they refuse to comply.
If it is not always necessary to imprison men, to flog them, or to
put them to death when the landowner collects his rents, if the
needy peasant pays a treble price to the merchant who deceives him,
or the mechanic accepts wages absurdly small in comparison with the
income of his master, or the poor man parts with his last rouble
for duties and taxes, it is because he remembers that men have been
flogged and put to death for trying to avoid compliance with what
was demanded of them. Like a caged tiger, who does not touch the
meat that lies before his eyes, and who when he is ordered to leap
over a stick obeys at once, not because he likes it, but because
he has not forgotten past hunger or the red-hot iron which he felt
every time he refused to obey; so it is with men, who, when they
submit to a law which is not for their advantage, to a law which is
disastrous to their interests, or to one which they firmly believe
to be unjust, do so because they remember what they will have to
suffer if they refuse to comply.
Those who benefit by privileges born of violence long since
perpetrated, often forget, and are very glad to forget, how such
privileges were obtained. And yet one has but to recall the annals
of history,--not the history of the exploits of kings, but genuine
history,--the history of the oppression of the majority by the
minority, in order to acknowledge that the scourge, the prison, and
the gallows have been the original and only sources whence all the
advantages of the rich over the poor have sprung. One has but to
remember the persistent and undying passion for gain among men, the
mainspring of human action in these days, to become convinced that
the advantages of the rich over the poor can be maintained in no
other way.
At rare intervals, oppression, flogging, imprisonment, executions,
the direct object of which is not to promote the welfare of the
rich, may possibly occur, but we can positively declare that in
our community, where for every man who lives at ease there are
ten overworked, hungry, and often cruelly suffering families of
working-men, all the privileges of the rich, all their luxury, all
their superfluities, are acquired and maintained only by tortures,
imprisonments, and executions.
The train that I met on the 9th day of September carrying soldiers,
muskets, ammunition, and rods to the famine-stricken peasants, in
order that the wealthy landowner might possess in peace the tract of
wood he had wrested from the peasants, a necessity of life to them,
to him a mere superfluity, affords a vivid proof of the degree to
which men have unconsciously acquired the habit of committing acts
wholly at variance with their convictions and their conscience.
The express consisted of one first-class carriage for the Governor,
officials, and officers, and several vans crowded with soldiers.
The jaunty young fellows in their fresh new uniforms were crowded
together, either standing, or sitting with their legs dangling
outside the wide open sliding doors of the vans. Some were smoking,
laughing, and jesting, some cracking seeds and spitting out the
shells. A few who jumped down upon the platform to get a drink of
water from the tub, meeting some of the officers, slackened their
pace and made that senseless gesture of lifting one hand to the
forehead; then, with serious faces, as though they had been doing
something not only sensible but actually important, they passed by,
watching the officers as they went. Soon they broke into a run,
evidently in high spirits, stamping on the planks of the platform as
they ran, and chatting, as is but natural for good-natured, healthy
young fellows who are making a journey together. These men, who were
on their way to murder starving fathers and grandfathers, seemed as
unconcerned as though they were off on the pleasantest, or at least
the most everyday, business in the world.
The gaily dressed officers and officials who were scattered about
on the platform and in the first-class waiting-room produced the
same impression. At a table laden with bottles sat the Governor, the
commander of the expedition, attired in his semi-military uniform,
eating his luncheon and quietly discussing the weather with some
friends he had met, as though the business that called him hither
was so simple a matter that it could neither ruffle his equanimity
nor diminish his interest in the change of the weather.
At some distance, but tasting no food, sat the chief of the police
with a mournful countenance, seemingly oppressed with the tiresome
formalities. Officers in gaudy, gold-embroidered uniforms moved
to and fro, talking loudly; one group was seated at a table just
finishing a bottle of wine; an officer at the bar who had eaten a
cake brushed away the crumbs that had fallen on his uniform, and
with a self-sufficient air flung a coin upon the counter; some
walked nonchalantly up and down in front of our train looking at the
faces of the women.
All these men on their way to commit murder, or to torture the
starved and defenseless peasants, by whose toil they were supported,
looked as if engaged upon some important business which they were
really proud to execute.
What did it mean?
These men, who were within half an hour's ride of the spot where,
in order to procure for a rich man an extra 3000 roubles, of which
he had no need whatever, which he was unjustly confiscating from
a community of famished peasants, might be obliged to perform the
most shocking deeds that the imagination can conceive,--to murder
and torture, as they did in Orel, innocent men, their brothers.
These men were now calmly approaching the time and place when these
horrors were to begin.
Since the preparations had been made, it could not very well be
claimed that all these men, officers and privates, did not know what
was before them, and what they were expected to do. The Governor had
given orders for the rods, the officials had purchased the birch
twigs, bargained for them, and noted the purchase in their accounts.
In the military department orders had been given and received
concerning ball cartridges. They all knew that they were on their
way to torture and possibly to put to death their brothers exhausted
by famine, and that perhaps in an hour they might begin the work.
To say, as they themselves would say, that they are acting from
principle, from a conviction that the state system must be
maintained, is untrue. Those men, in the first place, have rarely,
if ever, bestowed a single thought upon political science; and
in the second place, because they could never be convinced that
the business on which they are engaged serves to support rather
than destroy the State; and finally, because, as a matter of fact,
the majority of these men, if not all of them, would not only be
unwilling to sacrifice their peace and comfort to maintain the
State, but would never miss the opportunity to promote their own
interests at the expense of the State,--therefore it is not for the
sake of so vague a principle as that of maintaining the State that
they do this.
What, then, does all this mean?
I know these men. I may not know them as individuals, it is
true, yet I know their dispositions, their past lives, their
modes of thought. They have had mothers, some have wives and
children. Actually, they are, for the most part, kindly, gentle,
tender-hearted men, who abhor any kind of cruelty, to say nothing
of killing or torturing; moreover, every one of them professes
Christianity, and considers violence perpetrated against
the defenseless a contemptible and shameful act. Each taken
individually, in everyday life, is not only incapable, for the sake
of personal advantage, of doing one-hundredth part of what was
done by the Governor at Orel, but any one of them would consider
himself insulted if it were suggested that he could be capable of
doing anything like it in private life. And yet they are within
a half-hour's ride of the spot where they will inevitably find
themselves compelled to do such deeds.
What can it mean, then?
It is not only the men on this train who are ready to commit murder
and violence, but those others with whom the affair originated,
the landowner, the steward, the judge, those in St. Petersburg who
issue orders,--the Minister of State, the Czar, also worthy men and
professors of Christianity,--how can they, knowing the consequences,
conceive such a scheme, and direct its execution?
How can they, even, who take no active part in it,--the spectators,
whose indignation would be aroused by accounts of private violence,
even though it be but the ill-usage of a horse,--how can they allow
this shocking business to go on without rising in wrath to resist
it, crying aloud, "No, we will not allow you to flog or to kill
starving men because they refuse to surrender their last property
villainously attempted to be wrested from them!" And not only are
men found willing to do these deeds, but most of them, even the
chief instigators, like the steward, the landowner, the judge, and
those who take part in originating prosecution and punishment, the
Governor, the Minister of State, the Czar, remain perfectly calm,
and show no sign of remorse over such things. And they who are about
to execute this crime are equally calm.
Even the spectators, who, it would seem, have no personal interest
in the matter, look upon these men who are about to take part in
this dastardly business with sympathy rather than with aversion or
condemnation.
In the same compartment with me sat a merchant who dealt in timber,
a peasant by birth, who in loud and decided tones expressed his
approval of the outrage which the peasants were about to suffer.
"The government must be obeyed; that's what it's for. If we pepper
them well, they will never rebel again. It's no more than they
deserve!" he said.
What did it all mean?
It could not be said that all these men, the instigators, the
participants, the accomplices in this business, were rascals, who,
in defiance of conscience, realizing the utter abomination of the
act, were, either from mercenary motives or from fear of punishment,
determined to commit it. Any man of them would, given the requisite
circumstances, stand up for his convictions. Not one of those
officials would steal a purse, or read another man's letter, or
endure an insult without demanding satisfaction from the offender.
Not one of those officers would cheat at cards, or neglect to pay a
gambling debt, or betray a companion, or flee from the battlefield,
or abandon a flag. Not one of those soldiers would dare to reject
the sacrament, or even taste meat on Good Friday. Each of these men
would choose to endure any kind of privation, suffering, or danger,
rather than consent to do a deed which he considered wrong. Hence
it is evident that they are able to resist whatever is contrary to
their convictions.
Still less true would it be to pronounce these men brutes, to whom
such deeds are congenial rather than repulsive. One needs but to
talk with them to become convinced that all,--landowner, judge,
minister, governor, Czar, officers, and soldiers,--at the bottom of
their hearts not only disapprove of such deeds, but when a sense
of their true significance is borne in upon them, really suffer at
being forced to take part in these scenes. They can only try not to
think of them.
One needs but to speak to those who are actors in this business,
beginning with the landowner and ending with the lowest policeman
or soldier, to discover that at the bottom of their hearts they all
acknowledge the wickedness of the deed, and know that it would be
better to abstain from it; and this knowledge makes them suffer.
A lady of liberal views in our train, seeing the Governor and the
officers in the first-class waiting-room, and learning the object of
their journey, began to talk in an ostensibly loud tone, in order
that they might hear what she said, condemning the present laws and
crying shame upon the men who took part in this business. This made
everybody feel uncomfortable. The men knew not where to look, yet
no one ventured to argue the point. The passengers pretended that
remarks so senseless deserved no reply, but it was evident by the
expression of their faces and their wandering eyes that they felt
ashamed. I noticed the same in regard to the soldiers. They knew
well enough that they were going about an evil business, and they
preferred not to think of what was before them. When the timber
merchant, insincerely, in my opinion, and simply by way of showing
his superior knowledge, began to speak of the necessity of these
measures, the soldiers who heard him turned away frowning, and
pretended not to listen to him.
The landowner, his steward, the minister, the Czar, all who are
parties to this business, those who were traveling by this train,
even those who, taking no part in the affair, were but lookers-on,
all really know it to be wicked. Why, then, do they do these things,
why do they repeat them, why do they permit them to be?
Ask the landowner who started the affair; the judge who rendered a
decision legal in form, but absolutely unjust; and those who, like
the soldiers and the peasants, will, with their own hands, execute
this work of beating and murdering their brothers,--all of them,
instigators, administrators, and executioners, will make essentially
the same reply.