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

that it is a test, that

there is any choice about it. They seem to think there is no

course open but slavish submission. One would have thought these

insane words, which outrage everything a man of the present day

holds sacred, must rouse indignation. But there has been nothing

of the kind.

 

All the young men through the whole of Europe are exposed year

after year to this test, and with very few exceptions they

renounce all that a man can hold sacred, all express their

readiness to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the

bidding of the first crazy creature dressed up in a livery with

red and gold trimming, and only wait to be told where and when

they are to kill. And they actually are ready.

 

Every savage has something he holds sacred, something for which he

is ready to suffer, something he will not consent to do. But what

is it that is sacred to the civilized man of to-day? They say to

him: “You must become my slave, and this slavery may force you

to kill even your own father;” and he, often very well educated,

trained in all the sciences at the university, quietly puts his

head under the yoke. They dress him up in a clown’s costume, and

order him to cut capers, turn and twist and bow, and kill—he does

it all submissively. And when they let him go, he seems to shake

himself and go back to his former life, and he continues to

discourse upon the dignity of man, liberty, equality, and

fraternity as before.

 

“Yes, but what is one to do?” people often ask in genuine

perplexity. “If everyone would stand out it would be something,

but by myself, I shall only suffer without doing any good to

anyone.”

 

And that is true. A man with the social conception of life cannot

resist. The aim of his life is his personal welfare. It is better

for his personal welfare for him to submit, and he submits.

 

Whatever they do to him, however they torture or humiliate him, he

will submit, for, alone, he can do nothing; he has no principle

for the sake of which he could resist violence alone. And those

who control them never allow them to unite together. It is often

said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will

put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of

extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the

state conception of life to submission can be improved to

correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions,

they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like

senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move,

others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of

ribbon or gold lace.

 

And of this mass of men so brutalized as to be ready to promise to

kill their own parents, the social reformers—conservatives,

liberals, socialists, and anarchists—propose to form a rational

and moral society. What sort of moral and rational society can be

formed out of such elements? With warped and rotten planks you

cannot build a house, however you put them together. And to form

a rational moral society of such men is just as impossible a task.

They can be formed into nothing but a herd of cattle, driven by

the shouts and whips of the herdsmen. As indeed they are.

 

So, then, we have on one side men calling themselves Christians,

and professing the principles of liberty, equality, and

fraternity, and along with that ready, in the name of liberty, to

submit to the most slavish degradation; in the name of equality,

to accept the crudest, most senseless division of men by externals

merely into higher and lower classes, allies and enemies; and, in

the name of fraternity, ready to murder their brothers [see

footnote].

 

[Footnote: The fact that among certain nations, as

the English and the American, military service is not

compulsory (though already one hears there are some

who advocate that it should be made so) does not

affect the servility of the citizens to the government

in principle. Here we have each to go and kill or be

killed, there they have each to give the fruit of their

toil to pay for the recruiting and training of soldiers.]

 

The contradiction between life and conscience and the misery

resulting from it have reached the extreme limit and can go no

further. The state organization of life based on violence, the

aim of which was the security of personal, family, and social

welfare, has come to the point of renouncing the very objects for

which it was founded—it has reduced men to absolute renunciation

and loss of the welfare it was to secure.

 

The first half of the prophecy has been fulfilled in the

generation of men who have not accepted Christ’s teaching, Their

descendants have been brought now to the absolute necessity of

patting the truth of the second half to the test of experience.

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE WILL EMANCIPATE

MEN FROM THE MISERIES OF OUR PAGAN LIFE.

 

The External Life of Christian Peoples Remains Pagan Though they

are Penetrated by Christian Consciousness—The Way Out of this

Contradiction is by the Acceptance of the Christian Theory of

Life—Only Through Christianity is Every Man Free, and Emancipated

of All Human Authority—This Emancipation can be Effected by no

Change in External Conditions of Life, but Only by a Change in the

Conception of Life—The Christian Ideal of Life Requires

Renunciation of all Violence, and in Emancipating the Man who

Accepts it, Emancipates the Whole World from All External

Authorities—The Way Out of the Present Apparently Hopeless

Position is for Every Man who is Capable of Assimilating the

Christian Conception of Life, to Accept it and Live in Accordance

with it—But Men Consider this Way too Slow, and Look for

Deliverance Through Changes in Material Conditions of Life Aided

by Government—That Will Lead to No Improvement, as it is simply

Increasing the Evil under which Men are Suffering—A Striking

Instance of this is the Submission to Compulsory Military Service,

which it would be More Advantageous for Every Man to Refuse than

to Submit to—The Emancipation of Men Can Only be Brought About by

each Individual Emancipating Himself, and the Examples of this

Self-emancipation which are already Appearing Threaten the

Destruction of Governmental Authority—Refusal to Comply with the

Unchristian Demands of Government Undermines the Authority of the

State and Emancipates Men—And therefore Cases of such Non-compliance are Regarded with more Dread by State Authorities than

any Conspiracies or Acts of Violence—Examples of Non-compliance

in Russia, in Regard to Oath of Allegiance, Payment of Taxes,

Passports, Police Duties, and Military Service—Examples of such

Non-compliance in other States—Governments do not Know how to

Treat Men who Refuse to Comply with their Demands on Christian

Grounds—Such People, without Striking a Blow, Undermine the very

Basis of Government from Within—To Punish them is Equivalent to

Openly Renouncing Christianity, and Assisting in Diffusing the

Very Principle by which these Men justify their Non-compliance—So

Governments are in a Helpless Position—Men who Maintain the

Uselessness of Personal Independence, only Retard the Dissolution

Dissolution of the Present State Organization Based on Force.

 

The position of the Christian peoples in our days has remained

just as cruel as it was in the times of paganism. In many

respects, especially in the oppression of the masses, it has

become even more cruel than it was in the days of paganism.

 

But between the condition of men in ancient times and their

condition in our days there is just the difference that we see in

the world of vegetation between the last days of autumn and the

first days of spring. In the autumn the external lifelessness in

nature corresponds with its inward condition of death, while in

the spring the external lifelessness is in sharp contrast with the

internal state of reviving and passing into new forms of life.

 

In the same way the similarity between the ancient heathen life

and the life of to-day is merely external: the inward condition of

men in the times of heathenism was absolutely different from their

inward condition at the present time.

 

Then the outward condition of cruelty and of slavery was in

complete harmony with the inner conscience of men, and every step

in advance intensified this harmony; now the outward condition of

cruelty and of slavery is completely contradictory to the

Christian consciousness of men, and every step in advance only

intensifies this contradiction.

 

Humanity is passing through seemingly unnecessary, fruitless

agonies. It is passing through something like the throes of

birth. Everything is ready for the new life, but still the new

life does not come.

 

There seems no way out of the position. And there would be none,

except that a man (and thereby all men) is gifted with the power

of forming a different, higher theory of life, which at once frees

him from all the bonds by which he seems indissolubly fettered.

 

And such a theory is the Christian view of life made known to

mankind eighteen hundred years ago.

 

A man need only make this theory of life his own, for the fetters

which seemed so indissolubly forged upon him to drop off of

themselves, and for him to feel himself absolutely free, just as a

bird would feel itself free in a fenced-in place directly it tools

to its wings.

 

People talk about the liberty of the Christian Church, about

giving or not giving freedom to Christians. Underlying all these

ideas and expressions there is some strange misconception.

Freedom cannot be bestowed on or taken from a Christian or

Christians. Freedom is an inalienable possession of the

Christian.

 

If we talk of bestowing freedom on Christians or withholding it

from them, we are obviously talking not of real Christians but of

people who only call themselves Christians. A Christian cannot

fail to be free, because the attainment of the aim he sets before

himself cannot be prevented or even hindered by anyone or

anything.

 

Let a man only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to

understand it, let him understand, that is, that his life belongs

not to him—not to his own individuality, nor to his family, nor

to the state—but to him who has sent him into the world, and let

him once understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of

his own individuality, nor his family, nor of the state, but the

infinite law of him from whom he has come; and he will not only

feel himself absolutely free from every human power, but will even

cease to regard such power as at all able to hamper anyone.

 

Let a man but realize that the aim of his life is the fulfillment

of God’s law, and that law will replace all other laws for him,

and he will give it his sole allegiance, so that by that very

allegiance every human law will lose all binding and controlling

power in his eyes.

 

The Christian is independent of every human authority by the fact

that he regards the divine law of love, implanted in the soul of

every man, and brought before his consciousness by Christ, as the

sole guide of his life and other men’s also.

 

The Christian may be subjected to external violence, he may be

deprived of bodily freedom, he may be in bondage to his passions

(he who commits sin is the slave of sin), but he cannot be in

bondage in the sense of being forced by any danger or by any

threat of external harm to perform an act which is against his

conscience.

 

He cannot