The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

all men carried it out, then the human race

would come to an end,” they say.

 

“If we take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat and what

we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, do not defend

our life, nor resist evil by force, lay down our life for others,

and observe perfect chastity, the human race cannot exist,” they

say.

 

And they are perfectly right if they take the principle of

perfection given by Christ’s teaching as a rule which everyone is

bound to fulfill, just as in the state principles of life everyone

is bound to carry out the rule of paying taxes, supporting the

law, and so on.

 

The misconception is based precisely on the fact that the teaching

of Christ guides men differently from the way in which the

precepts founded on the lower conception of life guide men. The

precepts of the state conception of life only guide men by

requiring of them an exact fulfillment of rules or laws. Christ’s

teaching guides men by pointing them to the infinite perfection of

their heavenly Father, to which every man independently and

voluntarily struggles, whatever the degree of his imperfection in

the present.

 

The misunderstanding of men who judge of the Christian principle

from the point of view of the state principle, consists in the

fact that on the supposition that the perfection which Christ

points to, can be fully attained, they ask themselves (just as

they ask the same question on the supposition that state laws will

be carried out) what will be the result of all this being carried

out? This supposition cannot be made, because the perfection held

up to Christians is infinite and can never be attained; and Christ

lays down his principle, having in view the fact that absolute

perfection can never be attained, but that striving toward

absolute, infinite perfection will continually increase the

blessedness of men, and that this blessedness may be increased to

infinity thereby.

 

Christ is teaching not angels, but men, living and moving in the

animal life. And so to this animal force of movement Christ, as it

were, applies the new force-the recognition of Divide perfection-and thereby directs the movement by the resultant of these two

forces..

 

To suppose that human life is going in the direction to which

Christ pointed it, is just like supposing that a little boat

afloat on a rabid river, and directing its course almost exactly

against the current, will progress in that direction.

 

Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the

parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the

life of man is compounded: the force of his animal nature and the

force of the consciousness of Kinship to God. Saying nothing of

the animal force which asserts itself, remains always the same,

and is therefore independent of human will, Christ speaks only of

the Divine force, calling upon a man to know it more closely, to

set it more free from all that retards it, and to carry it to a

higher degree of intensity.

 

In the process of liberating, of strengthening this force, the

true life of man, according to Christ’s teaching, consists. The

true life, according to preceding religions, consists in carrying

out rules, the law; according to Christ’s teaching it consists in

an ever closer approximation to the divine perfection hell up

before every man, and recognized within himself by every man, in

an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of his

will in the will of God, that fusion toward which man strives, and

the attainment of which would be the destruction of the life me

know.

 

The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it

is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be

reached in infinity.

 

The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility life only

when men mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a

rule. It is only then that the principles presented in Christ’s

teaching appear to be destructive of life. These principles, on

the contrary, are the only ones that make true life possible.

Without these principles true life could not be possible.

 

“One ought not to expect so much,” is what people usually say in

discussing the requirements of the Christian religion. “One

cannot expect to take absolutely no thought for the morrow, as is

said in the Gospel, but only not to take too much thought for it;

one cannot give away all to the poor, but one must give away a

certain definite part; one need not aim at virginity, but one must

avoid debauchery; one need not forsake wife and children, but one

must not give too great a place to them in one’s heart,” and so

on.

 

But to speak like this is just like telling a man who is

struggling on a swift river and is directing his course against

the current, that it is impossible to cross the river rowing

against the current, and that to cross it he must float in the

direction of the point he wants to reach.

 

In reality, in order to reach the place to which he wants to go,

he must row with all his strength toward a point

much higher up.

 

To let go the requirements of the ideal means not only to diminish

the possibility of perfection, but to make an end of the ideal

itself. The ideal that has power over men is not an ideal

invented by someone, but the ideal that every man carries within

his soul. Only this ideal of complete infinite perfection has

power over men, and stimulates them to action. A moderate

perfection loses its power of influencing men’s hearts.

 

Christ’s teaching only has power when it demands absolute

perfection—that is, the fusion of the divine nature which exists

in every man’s soul with the will of God—the union of the Son

with the Father. Life according to Christ’s teaching consists of

nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in every

man, from the animal, and in bringing him closer to the Father.

 

The animal existence of a man does not constitute human life

alone. Life, according to the will of God only, is also not

human life. Human life is a combination of the animal life and

the divine life. And the more this combination approaches to the

divine life, the more life there is in it.

 

Life, according to the Christian religion, is a progress toward

the divine perfection. No one condition, according to this

doctrine, can be higher or lower than another. Every condition,

according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no

consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainable perfection,

and therefore in itself it does not imply a greater or lesser

degree of life. Increase of life, according to this, consists in

nothing but the quickening of the progress toward perfection. And

therefore the progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus,

of the woman that was a sinner, and of the robber on the cross,

implies a higher degree of life than the stagnant righteousness of

the Pharisee. And therefore for this religion there cannot be

rules which it is obligatory to obey. The man who is at a lower

level but is moving onward toward perfection is living a more

moral, a better life, is more fully carrying out Christ’s

teaching, than the man on a much higher level of morality who is

not moving onward toward perfection.

 

It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the Father

than those that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of

money lost and found again, were more precious than those that

were not lost.

 

The fulfillment of Christ’s teaching consists in moving away from

self toward God. It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws

and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching. Every degree of

perfection and every degree of imperfection are equal in it; no

obedience to laws constitutes a fulfillment of this doctrine, and

therefore for it there can be no binding rules and laws.

 

From this fundamental distinction between the religion of Christ

and all preceding religions based on the state conception of life,

follows a corresponding difference in the special precepts of the

state theory and the Christian precepts. The precepts of the

state theory of life insist for the most part on certain practical

prescribed acts, by which men are justified and secure of being

right. The Christian precepts (the commandment of love is not a

precept in the strict sense of the word, but the expression of the

very essence of the religion) are the five commandments of the

Sermon on the Mount—all negative in character. They show only

what at a certain stage of development of humanity men may not do.

 

These commandments are, as it were, signposts on the endless road

to perfection, toward which humanity is moving, showing the point

of perfection which is possible at a certain period in the

development of humanity.

 

Christ has given expression in the Sermon on the Mount to the

eternal ideal toward which men are spontaneously struggling, and

also the degree of attainment of it to which men may reach in our

times.

 

The ideal is not to desire to do ill to anyone, not to provoke ill

will, to love all men. The precept, showing the level below which

we cannot fall in the attainment of this ideal, is the prohibition

of evil speaking. And that is the first command.

 

The ideal is perfect chastity, even in thought. The precept,

showing the level below which we cannot fall in the attainment of

this ideal, is that of purity of married life, avoidance of

debauchery. That is the second command.

 

The ideal is to take no thought for the future, to live in the

present moment. The precept, showing the level below which we

cannot fall, is the prohibition of swearing, of promising anything

in the future. And that is the third command.

 

The ideal is never for any purpose to use force. The precept,

showing the level below which we cannot fall is that of returning

good for evil, being patient under wrong, giving the cloak also.

That is the fourth command.

 

The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us. The precept,

showing the level below which we cannot fall, is not to do evil to

our enemies, to speak well of them, and to make no difference

between them and our neighbors.

 

All these precepts are indications of what, on our journey to

perfection, we are already fully able to avoid, and what we must

labor to attain now, and what we ought by degrees to translate

into instinctive and unconscious habits. But these precepts, far

from constituting the whole of Christ’s teaching and exhausting

it, are simply stages on the way to perfection. These precepts

must and will be followed by higher and higher precepts on the way

to the perfection held up by the religion.

 

And therefore it is essentially a part of the Christian religion

to make demands higher than those expressed in its precepts; and

by no means to diminish the demands either of the ideal itself, or

of the precepts, as people imagine who judge it from the

standpoint of the social conception of life.

 

So much for one misunderstanding of the scientific men, in

relation to the import and aim of Christ’s teaching. Another

misunderstanding arising from the same source consists in

substituting love for men, the service of humanity, for the

Christian principles of love for God and his service.

 

The Christian doctrine to love God and serve him, and only