The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
- Performer: -
Book online «The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗». Author Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
the wicked would oppress the good—has really always existed and
will exist in human society. And therefore the suppression of
state violence cannot in any case be the cause of increased
oppression of the good by the wicked.
If state violence ceased, there would be acts of violence perhaps
on the part of different people, other than those who had done
deeds of violence before. But the total amount of violence could
not in any case be increased by the mere fact of power passing
from one set of men to another.
“State violence can only cease when there are no more wicked men
in society,” say the champions of the existing order of things,
assuming in this of course that since there will always be wicked
men, it can never cease. And that would be right enough if it
were the case, as they assume, that the oppressors are always the
best of men, and that the sole means of saving men from evil is by
violence. Then, indeed, violence could never cease. But since
this is not the case, but quite the contrary, that it is not the
better oppress the worse, but the worse oppress the better, and
since violence will never put an end to evil, and there is,
moreover, another means of putting an end to it, the assertion
that violence will never cease is incorrect. The use of violence
grows less and less and evidently must disappear. But this will
not come to pass, as some champions of the existing order imagine,
through the oppressed becoming better and better under the
influence of government (on the contrary, its influence causes
their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men
are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that
even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less
wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable of using
violence.
The progressive movement of humanity does not proceed from the
better elements in society seizing power and making those who are
subject to them better, by forcible means, as both conservatives
and revolutionists imagine. It proceeds first and principally
from the fact that all men in general are advancing steadily and
undeviatingly toward a more and more conscious assimilation of the
Christian theory of life; and secondly, from the fact that, even
apart from conscious spiritual life, men are unconsciously brought
into a more Christian attitude to life by the very process of one
set of men grasping the power, and again being replaced by others.
The worse elements of society, gaining possession of power, under
the sobering influence which always accompanies power, grow less
and less cruel, and become incapable of using cruel forms of
violence. Consequently others are able to seize their place, and
the same process of softening and, so to say, unconscious
Christianizing goes on with them. It is something like the
process of ebullition. The majority of men, having the non-Christian view of life, always strive for power and struggle to
obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the
least Christian elements of society overpower the most gentle,
well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence
to the upper ranks of society. And in them is Christ’s prophecy
fulfilled: “Woe to you that are rich! woe unto you that are full!
woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!” For the men
who are in possession of power and all that results from it—glory
and wealth—and have attained the various aims they set before
themselves, recognize the vanity of it all and return to the
position from which they came. Charles V., John IV., Alexander I.,
recognizing the emptiness and the evil of power, renounced it
because they were incapable of using violence for their own
benefit as they had done.
But they are not the solitary examples of this recognition of the
emptiness and evil of power. Everyone who gains a position of
power he has striven for, every general, every minister, every
millionaire, every petty official who has gained the place he has
coveted for ten years, every rich peasant who has laid by some
hundred rubles, passes through this unconscious process of
softening.
And not only individual men, but societies of men, whole nations,
pass through this process.
The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it
gives, seem a sufficient aim for men’s efforts only so long as
they are unattained. Directly a man reaches them he sees all
their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of
attraction. They are like clouds which have form and beauty only
from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their
splendor vanishes.
Men who are in possession of power and wealth, sometimes even
those who have gained for themselves their power and wealth, but
more often their heirs, cease to be so eager for power, and so
cruel in their efforts to obtain it.
Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian
influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men
sometimes in one, sometimes in several generations lose the vices
which are generated by the passion for power and wealth. They
become less cruel and so cannot maintain their position, and are
expelled from power by others less Christian and more wicked.
Thus they return to a rank of society lower in position, but
higher in morality, raising thereby the average level of Christian
consciousness in men. But directly after them again the worst,
coarsest, least Christian elements of society rise to the top, and
are subjected to the same process as their predecessors, and again
in a generation or so, seeing the vanity of what is gained by
violence, and having imbibed Christianity, they come down again
among the oppressed, and their place is again filled by new
oppressors, less brutal than former oppressors, though more so
than those they oppress. So that, although power remains
externally the same as it was, with every change of the men in
power there is a constant increase of the number of men who have
been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the
Christian conception of life, and with every change—though it is
the coarsest, crudest, and least Christian who come into
possession of power, they are less coarse and cruel and more
Christian than their predecessors when they gained possession of
power.
Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society,
transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to
society.
“Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of
the hindrances to human progress resulting from the violence of
power, gains more and more hold of men. Christianity penetrates
to the consciousness of men, not only in spite of the violence of
power, but also by means of it.
And therefore the assertion of the champions of the state, that if
the power of government were suppressed the wicked would oppress
the good, not only fails to show that that is to be dreaded, since
it is just what happens now, but proves, on the contrary, that it
is governmental power which enables the wicked to oppress the
good, and is the evil most desirable to suppress, and that it is
being gradually suppressed in the natural course of things.
“But if it be true that governmental power will disappear when
those in power become so Christian that they renounce power of
their own accord, and there are no men found willing to take their
place, and even if this process is already going on,” say the
champions of the existing order, “when will that come to pass?
If, after eighteen hundred years, there are still so many eager
for power, and so few anxious to obey, there seems no likelihood
of its happening very soon—or indeed of its ever happening at
all.
“Even if there are, as there have always been, some men who prefer
renouncing power to enjoying it, the mass of men in reserve, who
prefer dominion to subjection, is so great that it is difficult to
imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.
“Before this Christianizing process could so affect all men one
after another that they would pass from the heathen to the
Christian conception of life, and would voluntarily abandon power
and wealth, it would be necessary that all the coarse, half-savage
men, completely incapable of appreciating Christianity or acting
upon it, of whom there are always a great many in every Christian
society, should be converted to Christianity. More than this, all
the savage and absolutely non-Christian peoples, who are so
numerous outside the Christian world, must also be converted. And
therefore, even if we admit that this Christianizing process will
some day affect everyone, still, judging by the amount of progress
it has made in eighteen hundred years, it will be many times
eighteen centuries before it will do so. And it is therefore
impossible and unprofitable to think at present of anything so
impracticable as the suppression of authority. We ought only to
try to put authority into the best hands.”
And this criticism would be perfectly just, if the transition from
one conception of life to another were only accomplished by the
single process of all men, separately and successively, realizing,
each for himself, the emptiness of power, and reaching Christian
truth by the inner spiritual path. That process goes on
unceasingly, and men are passing over to Christianity one after
another by this inner way.
But there is also another external means by which men reach
Christianity and by which the transition is less gradual.
This transition from one organization of life to another is not
accomplished by degrees like the sand running through the
hourglass grain after grain. It is more like the water filling a
vessel floating on water. At first the water only runs in slowly
on one side, but as the vessel grows heavier it suddenly begins to
sink, and almost instantaneously fills with water.
It is just the same with the transitions of mankind from one
conception—and so from one organization of life—to another. At
first only gradually and slowly, one after another, men attain to
the new truth by the inner spiritual way, and follow it out in
life. But when a certain point in the diffusion of the truth has
been reached, it is suddenly assimilated by everyone, not by the
inner way, but, as it were, involuntarily.
That is why the champions of the existing order are wrong in
arguing that, since only a small section of mankind has passed
over to Christianity in eighteen centuries, it must be many times
eighteen centuries before all the remainder do the same. For in
that argument they do not take into account any other means,
besides the inward spiritual one, by which men assimilate a new
truth and pass from one order of life to another.
Men do not only assimilate a truth through recognizing it by
prophetic insight, or by experience of life. When the truth has
become sufficiently widely diffused, men at a lower stage of
development accept it all at once simply through confidence in
those who have reached it by the inner spiritual way, and are
applying it to life.
Every new truth, by which the order of human life is changed and
humanity is advanced, is at first accepted by only a very small
number of men who understand it through inner spiritual intuition.
The remainder of mankind who accepted on trust the preceding truth
on which the existing order is based, are always opposed to the
diffusion of the new truth.
But seeing that, to begin with, men do
Comments (0)