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

be compelled to do this, because the deprivations and

sufferings which form such a powerful weapon against men of the

state conception of life, have not the least power to compel him.

 

Deprivations and sufferings take from them the happiness for which

they live; but far from disturbing the happiness of the Christian,

which consists in the consciousness of fulfilling the will of God,

they may even intensify it, when they are inflicted on him for

fulfilling his will.

 

And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner

divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the

external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law

of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state

obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to

anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what

is called allegiance.

 

For a Christian the oath of allegiance to any government whatever

—the very act which is regarded as the foundation of the

existence of a state—is a direct renunciation of Christianity.

For the man who promises unconditional obedience in the future to

laws, made or to be made, by that very promise is in the most,

positive manner renouncing Christianity, which means obeying in

every circumstance of life only the divine law of love he

recognizes within him.

 

Under the pagan conception of life it was possible to carry out

the will of the temporal authorities, without infringing the law

of God expressed in circumcisions, Sabbaths, fixed times of

prayer, abstention from certain kinds of food, and so on. The one

law was not opposed to the other. But that is just the

distinction between the Christian religion and heathen religion.

Christianity does not require of a man certain definite negative

acts, but puts him in a new, different relation to men, from which

may result the most diverse acts, which cannot be defined

beforehand. And therefore the Christian not only cannot promise

to obey the will of any other man, without knowing what will be

required by that will; he not only cannot obey the changing laws

of than, but he cannot even promise to do anything definite at a

certain time, or to abstain from doing anything for a certain

time. For he cannot know what at any time will be required of him

by that Christian law of love, obedience to which constitutes the

meaning of life for him. The Christian, in promising

unconditional fulfillment of the laws of men in the future, would

show plainly by that promise that the inner law of God does not

constitute for him the sole law of his life.

 

For a Christian to promise obedience to men, or the laws of men,

is just as though a workman bound to one employer should also

promise to carry out every order that might be given him by

outsiders. One cannot serve two masters.

 

The Christian is independent of human authority, because he

acknowledges God’s authority alone. His law, revealed by Christ,

he recognizes in himself, and voluntarily obeys it.

 

And this independence is gained, not by means of strife, not by

the destruction of existing forms,of life, but only by a change in

the interpretation of life. This independence results first from

the Christian recognizing the law of love, revealed to him by his

teacher, as perfectly sufficient for all human relations, and

therefore he regards every use of force as unnecessary and

unlawful; and secondly, from the fact that those deprivations and

sufferings, or threats of deprivations and sufferings (which

reduce the man of the social conception of life to the necessity

of obeying) to the Christian from his different conception of

life, present themselves merely as the inevitable conditions of

existence. And these conditions, without striving against them by

force, he patiently endures, like sickness, hunger, and every

other hardship, but they cannot serve him as a guide for his

actions. The only guide for the Christian’s actions is to be

found in the divine principle living within him, which cannot be

checked or governed by anything.

 

The Christian acts according to the words of the prophecy applied

to his teacher: “He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any

man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not

break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth

judgment unto victory.” (Matt. xii. 19, 20.)

 

The Christian will not dispute with anyone, nor attack anyone, nor

use violence against anyone. On the contrary, he will bear

violence without opposing it. But by this very attitude to

violence, he will not only himself be free, but will free the

whole world from all external power.

 

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” If

there were any doubt of Christianity being the truth, the perfect

liberty, that nothing can curtail, which a man experiences

directly he makes the Christian theory of life his own, would be

an unmistakable proof of its truth.

 

Men in their present condition are like a swarm of bees hanging in

a cluster to a branch. The position of the bees on the branch is

temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They must start off

and find themselves a habitation. Each of the bees knows this,

and desires to change her own and the others’ position, but no one

of them can do it till the rest of them do it. They cannot all

start off at once, because one hangs on to another and hinders her

from separating from the swarm, and therefore they all continue to

hang there. It would seem that the bees could never escape from

their position, just as it seems that worldly men, caught in the

toils of the state conception of life, can never escape. And

there would be no escape for the bees, if each of them were not a

living, separate creature, endowed with wings of its own.

Similarly there would be no escape for men, if each were not a

living being endowed with the faculty of entering into the

Christian conception of life.

 

If every bee who could fly, did not try to fly, the others, too,

would never be stirred, and the swarm would never change its

position. And if the man who has mastered the Christian

conception of life would not, without waiting for other people,

begin to live in accordance with this conception, mankind would

never change its position. But only let one bee spread her wings,

start off, and fly away, and after her another, and another, and

the clinging, inert cluster would become a freely flying swarm of

bees. Just in the same way, only let one man look at life as

Christianity teaches him to look at it, and after him let another

and another do the same, and the enchanted circle of existence in

the state conception of life, from which there seemed no escape,

will be broken through.

 

But men think that to set all men free by this means is

too slow a process, that they must find some other means by which

they could set all men free at once. It is just as though the

bees who want to start and fly away should consider it too long a

process to wait for all the swarm to start one by one; and should

think they ought to find some means by which it would not be

necessary for every separate bee to spread her wings and fly off,

but by which the whole swarm could fly at once where it wanted to.

But that is not possible; till a first, a second, a third, a

hundredth bee spreads her wings and flies off of her own accord,

the swarm will not fly off and will not begin its new life. Till

every individual man makes the Christian conception of life his

own, and begins to live in accord with it, there can be no

solution of the problem of human life, and no establishment of a

new form of life.

 

One of the most striking phenomena of our times is precisely this

advocacy of slavery, which is promulgated among the masses, not by

governments, in whom it is inevitable, but by men who, in

advocating socialistic theories, regard themselves as the

champions of freedom.

 

These people advance the opinion that the amelioration of life,

the bringing of the facts of life into harmony with the

conscience, will come, not as the result of the personal efforts

of individual men, but of itself as the result of a certain

possible reconstruction of society effected in some way or other.

The idea is promulgated that men ought not to walk on their own

legs where they want and ought to go, but that a kind of floor

under their feet will be moved somehow, so that on it they can

reach where they ought to go without moving their own legs. And,

therefore, all their efforts ought to be directed, not to going so

far as their strength allows in the direction they ought to go,

but to standing still and constructing such a floor.

 

In the sphere of political economy a theory is propounded which

amounts to saying that the worse things are the better they are;

that the greater the accumulation of capital, and therefore the

oppression of the workman, the nearer the day of emancipation,

and, therefore, every personal effort on the part of a man to free

himself from the oppression of capital is useless. In the sphere

of government it is maintained that the greater the power of the

government, which, according to this theory, ought to intervene in

every department of private life in which it has not yet

intervened, the better it will be, and that therefore we ought to

invoke the interference of government in private life. In

politics and international questions it is maintained that the

improvement of the means of destruction, the multiplication of

armaments, will lead to the necessity of making war by means of

congresses, arbitration, and so on. And, marvelous to say, so

great is the dullness of men, that they believe in these theories,

in spite of the fact that the whole course of life, every step

they take, shows how unworthy they are of belief.

 

The people are suffering from oppression, and to deliver them from

this oppression they are advised to frame general measures for the

improvement of their position, which measures are to be intrusted

to the authorities, and themselves to continue to yield obedience

to the authorities. And obviously all that results from this is

only greater power in the hands of the authorities, and greater

oppression resulting from it.

 

Not one of the errors of men carries them so far away from the aim

toward which they are struggling as this very one. They do all

kinds of different things for the attainment of their aim, but not

the one simple obvious thing which is within reach of everyone.

They devise the subtlest means for changing the position which is

irksome to them, but not that simplest means, that everyone should

refrain from doing what leads to that position.

 

I have been told a story of a gallant police officer, who came to

a village where the peasants were in insurrection and the military

had been called out, and he undertook to pacify the insurrection

in the spirit of Nicholas I., by his personal influence alone. He

ordered some loads of rods to be brought, and collecting all the

peasants together into a barn, he went in with them, locking the

door after him. To begin with, he so terrified the peasants by

his loud threats that, reduced to submission by him, they set to

work to flog