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

the principles we believe in (we cannot help

still believing in them because they are the only foundation we

have to base our life on) we do the very opposite of all that our

conscience and our common sense require of us.

 

We are guided in economical, political, and international

questions by the principles which were appropriate to men of three

or five thousand years ago, though they are directly opposed to

our conscience and the conditions of life in which we are placed

to-day.

 

It was very well for the man of ancient times to live in a society

based on the division of mankind into masters and slaves, because

he believed that such a distinction was decreed by God and must

always exist. But is such a belief possible in these days?

 

The man of antiquity could believe he had the right to enjoy the

good things of this world at the expense of other men, and to keep

them in misery for generations, since he believed that men came

from different origins, were base or noble in blood, children of

Ham or of Japhet. The greatest sages of the world, the teachers

of humanity, Plato and Aristotle, justified the existence of

slaves and demonstrated the lawfulness of slavery; and even three

centuries ago, the men who described an imaginary society of the

future, Utopia, could not conceive of it without slaves.

 

Men of ancient and medieval times believed, firmly believed, that

men are not equal, that the only true men are Persians, or Greeks,

or Romans, or Franks. But we cannot believe that now. And people

who sacrifice themselves for the principles of aristocracy and of

patriotism to-duty, don’t believe and can’t believe what they

assert.

 

We all know and cannot help knowing—even though we may never have

heard the idea clearly expressed, may never have read of it, and

may never have put it into words, still through unconsciously

imbibing the Christian sentiments that are in the air—with our

whole heart we know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental

truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one

Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak;

we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love

implanted by our common Father in our hearts.

 

Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of to-day,

whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of

philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or

superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that

all men have an equal right to life and the good things of life,

and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another,

that all are equal. Everyone knows this, beyond doubt; everyone

feels it in his whole being. Yet at the same time everyone sees

all round him the division of men into two castes—the one,

laboring, oppressed, poor, and suffering, the other idle,

oppressing, luxurious, and profligate. And everyone not only sees

this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he

takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience

condemns. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of

this contradiction and his share in it.

 

Whether he be master or slave, the man of to-day cannot help

constantly feeling the painful opposition between his conscience

and actual life, and the miseries resulting from it.

 

The toiling masses, the immense majority of mankind who are

suffering under the incessant, meaningless, and hopeless toil and

privation in which their whole life is swallowed up, still find

their keenest suffering in the glaring contrast between what is

and what ought to be, according to all the beliefs held by

themselves, and those who have brought them to that condition and

keep them in it.

 

They know that they are in slavery and condemned to privation and

darkness to minister to the lusts of the minority who keep them

down. They know it, and they say so plainly. And this knowledge

increases their sufferings and constitutes its bitterest sting.

 

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

laborer, while he feels he is a slave, knows that he ought not to

be, and so he tastes the agony of Tantalus, forever desiring and

never gaining what might and ought to be his.

 

The sufferings of the working classes, springing from the

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

tenfold by the envy and hatred engendered by their consciousness

of it.

 

The laborer of the present day would not cease to suffer even if

his toil were much lighter than that of the slave of ancient

times, even if he gained an eight-hour working day and a wage of

three dollars a day. For he is working at the manufacture of

things which he will not enjoy, working not by his own will for

his own benefit, but through necessity, to satisfy the desires of

luxurious and idle people in general, and for the profit of a

single rich man, the owner of a factory or workshop in particular.

And he knows that all this is going on in a world in which it is a

recognized scientific principle that labor alone creates wealth,

and that to profit by the labor of others is immoral, dishonest,

and punishable by law; in a world, moreover, which professes to

believe Christ’s doctrine that we are all brothers, and that true

merit and dignity is to be found in serving one’s neighbor, not in

exploiting him. All this he knows, and he cannot but suffer

keenly from the sharp contrast between what is and what ought to

be.

 

“According to all principles, according to all I know, and what

everyone professes,” the workman says to himself. “I ought to be

free, equal to everyone else, and loved; and I am—a slave,

humiliated and hated.” And he too is filled with hatred and tries

to find means to escape from his position, to shake off the enemy

who is overriding him, and to oppress him in turn. People say,

“Workmen have no business to try to become capitalists, the poor

to try to put themselves in the place of the rich.” That is a

mistake. The workingmen and the poor would be wrong if they tried

to do so in a world in which slaves and masters were regarded as

different species created by God; but they are living in a world

which professes the faith of the Gospel, that all are alike sons

of God, and so brothers and equal. And however men may try to

conceal it, one of the first conditions of Christian life is love,

not in words but in deeds.

 

The man of the so-called educated classes lives in still more

glaring inconsistency and suffering. Every educated man, if he

believes in anything, believes in the brotherhood of all men, or

at least he has a sentiment of humanity, or else of justice, or

else he believes in science. And all the while he knows that his

whole life is framed on principles in direct opposition to it all,

to all the principles of Christianity, humanity, justice, and

science.

 

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

which he could not give up without suffering, can only be

satisfied through the exhausting, often fatal, toil of oppressed

laborers, that is, through the most obvious and brutal violation

of the principles of Christianity, humanity, and justice, and even

of science (that is, economic science). He advocates the

principles of fraternity, humanity, justice, and science, and yet

he lives so that he is dependent on the oppression of the working

classes, which he denounces, and his whole life is based on the

advantages gained by their oppression. Moreover he is directing

every effort to maintaining this state of things so flatly opposed

to all his beliefs.

 

We are all brothers—and yet every morning a brother or a sister

must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but

every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such

things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their

health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them.

We are all brothers, yet I live by working in a bank, or

mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my

brothers. We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for

prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute

whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about,

and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed. We are all

brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from

needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle.

We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false

Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which

only serve’s to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.

I take a stipend as priest or bishop for deceiving men in the

matter of the greatest importance to them. We are all brothers,

but I will not give the poor the benefit of my educational,

medical, or literary labors except for money. We are all

brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit murder,

for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or

fortifications.

 

The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency.

The more delicate a man’s conscience is, the more painful this

contradiction is to him.

 

A man of sensitive conscience cannot but suffer if he lives such a

life. The only means by which he can escape from this suffering

is by blunting his conscience, but even if some men succeed in

dulling their conscience they cannot dull their fears.

 

The men of the higher dominating classes whose conscience is

naturally not sensitive or has become blunted, if they don’t

suffer through conscience, suffer from fear and hatred. They are

bound to suffer. They know all the hatred of them existing, and

inevitably existing in the working classes. They are aware that

the working classes know that they are deceived and exploited, and

that they are beginning to organize themselves to shake off

oppression and revenge themselves on their oppressors. The higher

classes see the unions, the strikes, the May Day Celebrations, and

feel the calamity that is threatening them, and their terror

passes into an instinct of self-defense and hatred. They know

that if for one instant they are worsted in the struggle with

their oppressed slaves, they will perish, because the slaves are

exasperated and their exasperation is growing more intense with

every day of oppression. The oppressors, even if they wished to

do so, could not make an end to oppression. They know that they

themselves will perish directly they even relax the harshness of

their oppression. And they do not relax it, in spite of all their

pretended care for the welfare of the working classes, for the

eight-hour day, for regulation of the labor of minors and of

women, for savings banks and pensions. All that is humbug, or

else simply anxiety to keep the slave fit to do his work. But the

slave is still a slave, and the master who cannot live without a

slave is less disposed to set him free than ever.

 

The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a

man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down,

not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows

that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself