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

this we need only

follow the rule of love to humanity, dismissing all thought of

love of God altogether.

 

The mistaken notion of scientific men that the essence of

Christianity consists in the supernatural, and that its moral

teaching is impracticable, constitutes another reason

of the failure of men of the present day to understand

Christianity.

 

CHAPTER V.

 

CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.

 

Men Think they can Accept Christianity without Altering their

Life—Pagan Conception of Life does not Correspond with Present

Stage of Development of Humanity, and Christian Conception

Alone Can Accord with it—Christian Conception of Life not yet

Understood by Men, but the Progress of Life itself will Lead

them Inevitably to Adopt it—The Requirements of a New Theory

of Life Always Seem Incomprehensible, Mystic, and Supernatural

—So Seem the Requirements of the Christian Theory of Life to

the Majority of Men—The Absorption of the Christian Conception

of Life will Inevitably be Brought About as the Result of

Material and Spiritual Causes—The Fact of Men Knowing the

Requirements of the Higher View of Life, and yet Continuing to

Preserve Inferior Organizations of Life, Leads to

Contradictions and Sufferings which Embitter Existence and Must

Result in its Transformation—The Contradictions of our Life—

The Economic Contradiction and the Suffering Induced by it for

Rich and Poor Alike—The Political Contradiction and the

Sufferings Induced by Obedience to the Laws of the State—The

International Contradiction and the Recognition of it by

Contemporaries: Komarovsky, Ferri, Booth, Passy, Lawson,

Wilson, Bartlett, Defourney, Moneta—The Striking Character of

the Military Contradiction.

 

There are many reasons why Christ’s teaching is not understood.

One reason is that people suppose they have understood it when

they have decided, as the Churchmen do, that it was revealed by

supernatural means, or when they have studied, as the scientific

men do, the external forms in which it has been manifested.

Another reason is the mistaken notion that it is impracticable,

and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love for humanity.

But the principal reason, which is the source of all the other

mistaken ideas about it, is the notion that Christianity is a

doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of

life.

 

Men who are used to the existing order of things, who like it and

dread its being changed, try to take the doctrine as a collection

of revelations and rules which one can accept without their

modifying one’s life. While Christ’s teaching is not only a

doctrine which gives rules which a man must follow, it unfolds a

new meaning in life, and defines a whole world of human activity

quite different from all that has preceded it and appropriate to

the period on which man is entering.

 

The life of humanity changes and advances, like the life of the

individual, by stages, and every stage has a theory of life

appropriate to it, which is inevitably absorbed by men. Those who

do not absorb it consciously, absorb it unconsciously. It is the

same with the changes in the beliefs of peoples and of all

humanity as it is with the changes of belief of individuals. If

the father of a family continues to be guided in his conduct by

his childish conceptions of life, life becomes so difficult for

him that he involuntarily seeks another philosophy and readily

absorbs that which is appropriate to his age.

 

That is just what is happening now to humanity at this time of

transition through which we are passing, from the pagan conception

of life to the Christian. The socialized man of the present day

is brought by experience of life itself to the necessity of

abandoning the pagan conception of life, which is inappropriate to

the present stage of humanity, and of submitting to the obligation

of the Christian doctrines, the truths of which, however corrupt

and misinterpreted, are still known to him, and alone offer him a

solution of the contradictions surrounding him.

 

If the requirements of the Christian doctrine seem strange and

even alarming to the than of the social theory of life, no less

strange, incomprehensible, and alarming to the savage of ancient

times seemed the requirements of the social doctrine when it was

not fully understood and could not be foreseen in its results.

 

“It is unreasonable,” said the savage, “to sacrifice my peace of

mind or my life in defense of something incomprehensible,

impalpable, and conventional—family, tribe, or nation; and above

all it is unsafe to put oneself at the disposal of the power of

others.”

 

But the time came when the savage, on one hand, felt, though

vaguely, the value of the social conception of life, and of its

chief motor power, social censure, or social approbation—glory,

and when, on the other hand, the difficulties of his personal life

became so great that he could not continue to believe in the value

of his old theory of life. Then he accepted the social, state

theory of life and submitted to it.

 

That is just what the man of the social theory of life is passing

through now.

 

“It is unreasonable,” says the socialized man, “to sacrifice my

welfare and that of my family and my country in order to fulfill

some higher law, which requires me to renounce my most natural and

virtuous feelings of love of self, of family, of kindred, and of

country; and above all, it is unsafe to part with the security of

life afforded by the organization of government.”

 

But the time is coming when, on one hand, the vague consciousness

in his soul of the higher law, of love to God and his neighbor,

and, on the other hand, the suffering, resulting from the

contradictions of life, will force the man to reject the social

theory and to assimilate the new one prepared ready for him, which

solves all the contradictions and removes all his sufferings—the

Christian theory of life. And this time has now come.

 

We, who thousands of years ago passed through the transition, from

the personal, animal view of life to the socialized view, imagine

that that transition was an inevitable and natural one; but this

transition though which we have been passing for the last eighteen

hundred years seems arbitrary, unnatural, and alarming. But we

only fancy this because that first transition has been so fully

completed that the practice attained by it has become unconscious

and instinctive in us, while the present transition is not yet

over and we have to complete it consciously.

 

It took ages, thousands of years, for the social conception of

life to permeate men’s consciousness. It went through various

forms and has now passed into the region of the instinctive

through inheritance, education, and habit. And therefore it seems

natural to us. But five thousand years ago it seemed as unnatural

and alarming to men as the Christian doctrine in its true sense

seems to-day.

 

We think to-day that the requirements of the Christian doctrine—

of universal brotherhood, suppression of national distinctions,

abolition of private property, and the strange injunction of nonresistance to evil by force—demand what is impossible. But it

was just the same thousands of years ago, with every social or

even family duty, such as the duty of parents to support their

children, of the young to maintain the old, of fidelity in

marriage. Still more strange, and even unreasonable, seemed the

state duties of submitting to the appointed authority, and paying

taxes, and fighting in defense of the country, and so on. All

such requirements seem simple, comprehensible, and natural to us

to-day, and we see nothing mysterious or alarming in them. But

three or five thousand years ago they seemed to require what was

impossible.

 

The social conception of life served as the basis of religion

because at the time when it was first presented to men it seemed

to them absolutely incomprehensible, mystic, and supernatural.

Now that we have outlived that phase of the life of humanity, we

understand the rational grounds for uniting men in families,

communities, and states. But in antiquity the duties involved by

such association were presented under cover of the supernatural

and were confirmed by it.

 

The patriarchal religions exalted the family, the tribe, the

nation. State religions deified emperors and states. Even now

most ignorant people—like our peasants, who call the Tzar an

earthly god—obey state laws, not through any rational recognition

of their necessity, nor because they have any conception of the

meaning of state, but through a religious sentiment.

 

In precisely the same way the Christian doctrine is presented to

men of the social or heathen theory of life to-day, in the guise

of a supernatural religion, though there is in reality nothing

mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about it. It is simply the

theory of life which is appropriate to the present degree of

material development, the present stage of growth of humanity, and

which must therefore inevitably be accepted.

 

The time will come—it is already coming—when the Christian

principles of equality and fraternity, community of property, nonresistance of evil by force, will appear just as natural and

simple as the principles of family or social life seem to us now.

 

Humanity can no more go backward in its development than the

individual man. Men have outlived the social, family, and state

conceptions of life. Now they must go forward and assimilate the

next and higher conception of life, which is what is now taking

place. This change is brought about in two ways: consciously

through spiritual causes, and unconsciously through material

causes.

 

Just as the individual man very rarely changes his way of life at

the dictates of his reason alone, but generally continues to live

as before, in spite of the new interests and aims revealed to him

by his reason, and only alters his way of living when it has

become absolutely opposed to his conscience, and consequently

intolerable to him; so, too, humanity, long after it has learnt

through its religions the new interests and aims of life, toward

which it must strive, continues in the majority of its

representatives to live as before, and is only brought to accept

the new conception by finding it impossible to go on living its

old life as before.

 

Though the need of a change of life is preached by the religious

leaders and recognized and realized by the most intelligent men,

the majority, in spite of their reverential attitude to their

leaders, that is, their faith in their teaching, continue to be

guided by the old theory of life in their present complex

existence. As though the father of a family, knowing how he ought

to behave at his age, should yet continue through habit and

thoughtlessness to live in the same childish way as he did in

boyhood.

 

That is just what is happening in the transition of humanity from

one stage to another, through which we are passing now. Humanity

has outgrown its social stage and has entered upon a new period.

It recognizes the doctrine which ought to be made the basis of

life in this new period. But through inertia it continues to keep

up the old forms of life. From this inconsistency between the new

conception of life and practical life follows a whole succession

of contradictions and sufferings which embitter our life and

necessitate its alteration.

 

One need only compare the practice of life with the theory of it,

to be dismayed at the glaring antagonism between our conditions of

life and our conscience.

 

Our whole life is in flat contradiction with all we know, and with

all we regard as necessary and right. This contradiction runs

through everything, in economic life, in political life, and in

international life. As though the had forgotten what we knew and

put away for a time