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

such is my own, my personal will, but because

such is the will of him who sent me into life, and gave me an

indubitable law for my conduct through life.”

 

Whatever arguments may be advanced in support of the contention

that the suppression of government authority would be injurious

and would lead to great calamities, men who have once outgrown the

governmental form of society cannot go back to it again. And all

the reasoning in the world cannot make the man who has outgrown

the governmental form of society take part in actions disallowed

by his conscience, any more than the full-grown bird can be made

to return into the egg-shell.

 

“But even it be so,” say the champions of the existing order of

things, “still the suppression of government violence can only be

possible and desirable when all men have become Christians. So

long as among people nominally Christians there are unchristian

wicked men, who for the gratification of their own lusts are ready

to do harm to others, the suppression of government authority, far

from being a blessing to others, would only increase their

miseries. The suppression of the governmental type of society is

not only undesirable so long as there is only a minority of true

Christians; it would not even be desirable if the whole of a

nation were Christians, but among and around them were still

unchristian men of other nations. For these unchristian men would

rob, outrage, and kill the Christians with impunity and would make

their lives miserable. All that would result, would be that the

bad would oppress and outrage the good with impunity. And

therefore the authority of government must not be suppressed till

all the wicked and rapacious people in the world are extinct. And

since this will either never be, or at least cannot be for a long

time to come, in spite of the efforts of individual Christians to

be independent of government authority, it ought to be maintained

in the interests of the majority. The champions of government

assert that without it the wicked will oppress and outrage the

good, and that the power of the government enables the good to

resist the wicked.”

 

But in this assertion the champions of the existing order of

things take for granted the proposition they want to prove. When

they say that except for the government the bad would oppress the

good, they take it for granted that the good are those who at the

present time are in possession of power, and the bad are those who

are in subjection to it. But this is just what wants proving. It

would only be true if the custom of our society were what is, or

rather is supposed to be, the custom in China; that is, that the

good always rule, and that directly those at the head of

government cease to be better than those they rule over, the

citizens are bound to remove them. This is supposed to be the

custom in China. In reality it is not so and can never be so.

For to remove the heads of a government ruling by force, it is not

the right alone, but the power to do so that is needed. So that

even in China this is only an imaginary custom. And in our

Christian world we do not even suppose such a custom, and we have

nothing on which to build up the supposition that it is the good

or the superior who are in power; in reality it is those who have

seized power and who keep it for their own and their retainers’

benefit.

 

The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must

love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but

quite consistent with the very opposite qualities—pride, cunning,

cruelty.

 

Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others,

without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses,

executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be

maintained.

 

“If the power of government is suppressed the more wicked will

oppress the less wicked,” say the champions of state authority.

But when the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Romans conquered

the Greeks, and the Barbarians conquered the Romans, is it

possible that all the conquerors were always better than those

they conquered? And the same with the transitions of power within

a state from one personage to another: has the power always passed

from a worse person to a better one? When Louis XVI. was removed

and Robespierre came to power, and afterward Napoleon—who ruled

then, a better man or a worse? And when were better men in power,

when the Versaillist party or when the Commune was in power? When

Charles I. was ruler, or when Cromwell? And when Peter III. was

Tzar, or when he was killed and Catherine was Tzaritsa in one-half

of Russia and Pougachef ruled the other? Which was bad then, and

which was good? All men who happen to be in authority assert that

their authority is necessary to keep the bad from oppressing the

good, assuming that they themselves are the good PAR EXCELLENCE,

who protect other good people from the bad.

 

But ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him

to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses

the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently

ruling means doing to others what we would we would not they

should do unto us, that is, doing wrong.

 

To submit means to prefer suffering to using force. And to prefer

suffering to using force means to be good, or at least less wicked

than those who do unto others what they would not like themselves.

 

And therefore, in all probability, not the better but the worse

have always ruled and are ruling now. There may be bad men among

those who are ruled, but it cannot be that those who are better

have generally ruled those who are worse.

 

It might be possible to suppose this with the inexact heathen

definition of good; but with the clear Christian definition of

good and evil, it is impossible to imagine it.

 

If the more or less good, and the more or less bad cannot be

distinguished in the heathen world, the Christian conception of

good and evil has so clearly defined the characteristics of the

good and the wicked, that it is impossible to confound them.

According to Christ’s teaching the good are those who are meek and

long-suffering, do not resist evil by force, forgive injuries, and

love their enemies; those are wicked who exalt themselves,

oppress, strive, and use force. Therefore by Christ’s teaching

there can be no doubt whether the good are to be found among

rulers or ruled, and whether the wicked are among the ruled or the

rulers. Indeed it is absurd even to speak of Christians ruling.

 

Non-Christians, that is those who find the aim of their lives in

earthly happiness, must always rule Christians, the aim of whose

lives is the renunciation of such earthly happiness.

 

This difference has always existed and has become more and more

defined as the Christian religion has been more widely diffused

and more correctly understood.

 

The more widely true Christianity was diffused and the more it

penetrated men’s conscience, the more impossible it was for

Christians to be rulers, and the easier it became for non-Christians to rule them.

 

“To get rid of governmental violence in a society in which all are

not true Christians, will only result in the wicked dominating the

good and oppressing them with impunity,” say the champions of the

existing order of things. But it has never been, and cannot be

otherwise. So it has always been from the beginning of the world,

and so it is still. THE WICKED WILL ALWAYS DOMINATE THE GOOD, AND

WILL ALWAYS OPPRESS THEM. Cain overpowered Abel, the cunning

Jacob oppressed the guileless Esau and was in his turn deceived by

Laban, Caiaphas and Pilate oppressed Christ, the Roman emperors

oppressed Seneca, Epictetus, and the good Romans who lived in

their times. John IV. with his favorites, the syphilitic drunken

Peter with his buffoons, the vicious Catherine with her paramours,

ruled and oppressed the industrious religious Russians of their

times.

 

William is ruling over the Germans, Stambouloff over the

Bulgarians, the Russian officials over the Russian people. The

Germans have dominated the Italians, now they dominate the

Hungarians and Slavonians; the Turks have dominated and still

dominate the Slavonians and Greeks; the English dominate the

Hindoos, the Mongolians dominate the Chinese.

 

So that whether governmental violence is suppressed or not, the

position of good men, in being oppressed by the wicked, will be

unchanged.

 

To terrify men with the prospect of the wicked dominating the good

is impossible, for that is just what has always been, and is now,

and cannot but be.

 

The whole history of pagan times is nothing but a recital of the

incidents and means by which the more wicked gained possession of

power over the less wicked, and retained it by cruelties and

deceptions, ruling over the good under the pretense of guarding

the right and protecting the good from the wicked. All the

revolutions in history are only examples of the more wicked

seizing power and oppressing the good. In declaring that if their

authority did not exist the more wicked would oppress the good,

the ruling authorities only show their disinclination to let other

oppressors come to power who would like to snatch it from them.

 

But in asserting this they only accuse themselves, say that their

power, i. e., violence, is needed to defend men from other

possible oppressors in the present or the future [see footnote].

 

[Footnote: I may quote in this connection the amazingly

naive and comic declaration of the Russian authorities,

the oppressors of other nationalities—the Poles, the

Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews. The

Russian Government has oppressed its subjects for

centuries, and has never troubled itself about the

Little Russians of Poland, or the Letts of the Baltic

provinces, or the Russian peasants, exploited by everyone.

And now it has all of a sudden become the champion of

the oppressed—the very oppressed whom it is itself

oppressing.]

 

The weakness of the use of violence lies in the fact that all the

arguments brought forward by oppressors in their own defense can

with even better reason be advanced against them. They plead the

danger of violence—most often imagined in the future—but they

are all the while continuing to practice actual violence

themselves. “You say that men used to pillage and murder in the

past, and that you are afraid that they will pillage and murder

one another if your power were no more. That may happen—or it

may not happen. But the fact that you ruin thousands of men in

prisons, fortresses, galleys, and exile, break up millions of

families and ruin millions of men, physically as well as morally,

in the army, that fact is not an imaginary but a real act of

violence, which, according to your own argument, one ought to

oppose by violence. And so you are yourselves these wicked men

against whom, according to your own argument, it is absolutely

necessary to use violence,” the oppressed are sure to say to their

oppressors. And non-Christian men always do say, and think and

act on this reasoning. If the oppressed are more wicked than

their oppressors, they attack them and try to overthrow them; and

in favorable circumstances they succeed in overthrowing them, or

what is more common, they rise into the ranks of the oppressors

and assist in their acts of violence.

 

So that the very violence which the champions of government hold

up