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

our actions to

this new knowledge.

 

That is the life of each individual man, and that is the life of

human societies and of humanity.

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE HAS ALREADY ARISEN IN OUR

SOCIETY, AND WILL INFALLIBLY PUT AN END TO THE PRESENT

ORGANIZATION OF OUR LIFE BASED ON FORCE—WHEN THAT WILL BE.

 

The Condition and Organization of our Society are Terrible, but

they Rest only on Public Opinion, and can be Destroyed by it—

Already Violence is Regarded from a Different Point of View; the

Number of those who are Ready to Serve the Government is

Diminishing; and even the Servants of Government are Ashamed of

their Position, and so often Do Not Perform their Duties—These

Facts are all Signs of the Rise of a Public Opinion, which

Continually Growing will Lead to No One being Willing to Enter

Government Service—Moreover, it Becomes More and More Evident

that those Offices are of No Practical Use—Men already Begin to

Understand the Futility of all Institutions Based on Violence, and

if a Few already Understand it, All will One Day Understand it—

The Day of Deliverance is Unknown, but it Depends on Men

Themselves, on how far Each Man Lives According to the Light that

is in Him.

 

The position of Christian humanity with its prisons, galleys,

gibbets, its factories and accumulation of capital, its taxes,

churches, gin-palaces, licensed brothels, its ever-increasing

armament and its millions of brutalized men, ready, like chained

dogs, to attack anyone against whom their master incites them,

would be terrible indeed if it were the product of violence, but

it is pre-eminently the product of public opinion. And what has

been established by public opinion can be destroyed by public

opinion—and, indeed, is being destroyed by public opinion.

 

Money lavished by hundreds of millions, tens of millions of

disciplined troops, weapons of astounding destructive power, all

organizations carried to the highest point of perfection, a whole

army of men charged with the task of deluding and hypnotizing the

people, and all this, by means of electricity which annihilates

distance, under the direct control of men who regard such an

organization of society not only as necessary for profit, but even

for self-preservation, and therefore exert every effort of their

ingenuity to preserve it—what an invincible power it would seem!

And yet we need only imagine for a moment what will really

inevitably come to pass, that is, the Christian social standard

replacing the heathen social standard and established with the

same power and universality, and the majority of men as much

ashamed of taking any part in violence or in profiting by it, as

they are to-day of thieving, swindling, begging, and cowardice;

and at once we see the whole of this complex, and seemingly

powerful organization of society falls into ruins of itself

without a struggle.

 

And to bring this to pass, nothing new need be brought before

men’s minds. Only let the mist, which veils from men’s eyes the

true meaning of certain acts of violence, pass away, and the

Christian public opinion which is springing up would overpower the

extinct public opinion which permitted and justified acts of

violence. People need only come to be as much ashamed to do deeds

of violence, to assist in them or to profit by them, as they now

are of being, or being reputed a swindler, a thief, a coward, or a

beggar. And already this change is beginning to take place. We

do not notice it just as we do not notice the movement of the

earth, because we are moved together with everything around us.

 

It is true that the organization of society remains in its

principal features just as much an organization based on violence

as it was one thousand years ago, and even in some respects,

especially in the preparation for war and in war itself, it

appears still more brutal. But the rising Christian ideal, which

must at a certain stage of development replace the heathen ideal

of life, already makes its influence felt. A dead tree stands

apparently as firmly as ever—it may even seem firmer because it

is harder—but it is rotten at the core, and soon must fall. It

is just so with the present order of society, based on force. The

external aspect is unchanged. There is the same division of

oppressors and oppressed, but their view of the significance and

dignity of their respective positions is no longer what it once

was.

 

The oppressors, that is, those who take part in government, and

those who profit by oppression, that is, the rich, no longer

imagine, as they once did, that they are the elect of the world,

and that they constitute the ideal of human happiness and

greatness, to attain which was once the highest aim of the

oppressed.

 

Very often now it is not the oppressed who strive to attain the

position of the oppressors, and try to imitate them, but on the

contrary the oppressors who voluntarily abandon the advantages of

their position, prefer the condition of the oppressed, and try to

resemble them in the simplicity of their life.

 

Not to speak of the duties and occupations now openly despised,

such as that of spy, agent of secret police, moneylender, and

publican, there are a great number of professions formerly

regarded as honorable, such as those of police officials,

courtiers, judges, and administrative functionaries, clergymen,

military officers, speculators, and bankers, which are no longer

considered desirable positions by everyone, and are even despised

by a special circle of the most respected people. There are

already men who voluntarily abandon these professions which were

once reckoned irreproachable, and prefer less lucrative callings

which are in no way connected with the use of force.

And there are even rich men who, not through religious sentiment,

but simply through special sensitiveness to the social standard

that is springing up, relinquish their inherited property,

believing that a man can only justly consume what he has gained by

his own labor.

 

The position of a government official or of a rich man is no

longer, as it once was, and still is among non-Christian peoples,

regarded as necessarily honorable and deserving of respect, and

under the special blessing of God. The most delicate and moral

people (they are generally also the most cultivated) avoid such

positions and prefer more humble callings that are not dependent

on the use of force.

 

The best of our young people, at the age when they are still

uncorrupted by life and are choosing a career, prefer the calling

of doctor, engineer, teacher, artist, writer, or even that of

simple farmer living on his own labor, to legal, administrative,

clerical, and military positions in the pay of government, or to

an idle existence living on their incomes.

 

Monuments and memorials in these days are mostly not erected in

honor of government dignitaries, or generals, or still less of

rich men, but rather of artists, men of science, and inventors,

persons who have nothing in common with the government, and often

have even been in conflict with it. They are the men whose

praises are celebrated in poetry, who are honored by sculpture and

received with triumphant jubilations.

 

The best men of our day are all striving for such places of honor.

Consequently the class from which the wealthy and the government

officials are drawn grows less in number and lower in intelligence

and education, and still more in moral qualities. So that

nowadays the wealthy class and men at the head of government do

not constitute, as they did in former days, the �LITE of society;

on the contrary, they are inferior to the middle class.

 

In Russia and Turkey as in America and France, however often the

government change its officials, the majority of them are self-seeking and corrupt, of so low a moral standard that they do not

even come up the elementary requirements of common honesty

expected by the government. One may often nowadays hear from

persons in authority the na�ve complaint that the best people are

always, by some strange—as it seems to them—fatality, to be

found in the camp of the opposition. As though men were to

complain that those who accepted the office of hangman were—by

some strange fatality—all persons of very little refinement or

beauty of character.

 

The most cultivated and refined people of our society are not

nowadays to be found among the very rich, as used formerly to be

the rule. The rich are mostly coarse money grubbers, absorbed

only, in increasing their hoard, generally by dishonest means, or

else the degenerate heirs of such money grubbers, who, far from

playing any prominent part in society, are mostly treated with

general contempt.

 

And besides the fact that the class from which the servants of

government and the wealthy are drawn grows less in number and

lower in caliber, they no longer themselves attach the same

importance to their positions as they once did; often they are

ashamed of the ignominy of their calling and do not perform the

duties they are bound to perform in their position. Kings and

emperors scarcely govern at all; they scarcely ever decide upon an

internal reform or a new departure in foreign politics. They

mostly leave the decision of such questions to government

institutions or to public opinion. All their duties are reduced

to representing the unity and majesty of government. And even

this duty they perform less and less successfully. The majority

of them do not keep up their old unapproachable majesty, but

become more and more democratized and even vulgarized, casting

aside the external prestige that remained to them, and thereby

destroying the very thing it was their function to maintain.

 

It is just the same with the army. Military officers of the

highest rank, instead of encouraging in their soldiers the

brutality and ferocity necessary for their work, diffuse education

among the soldiers, inculcate humanity, and often even themselves

share the socialistic ideas of the masses and denounce war. In

the last plots against the Russian Government many of the

conspirators were in the army. And the number of the disaffected

in the army is always increasing. And it often happens (there was

a case, indeed, within the last few days) that when called upon to

quell disturbances they refuse to fire upon the people. Military

exploits are openly reprobated by the military themselves, and are

often the subject of jests among them.

 

It is the same with judges and public prosecutors. The judges,

whose duty it is to judge and condemn criminals, conduct the

proceedings so as to whitewash them as far as possible. So that

the Russian Government, to procure the condemnation of those whom

they want to punish, never intrust them to the ordinary tribunals,

but have them tried before a court martial, which, is only a

parody of justice. The prosecutors Themselves often refuse to

proceed, and even when they do proceed, often in spite of the law,

really defend those they ought to be accusing. The learned

jurists whose business it is to justify the violence of authority,

are more and more disposed to deny the right of punishment and to

replace it by theories of irresponsibility and even of moral

insanity, proposing to deal with those they call criminals by

medical treatment only.

 

Jailers and overseers of galleys generally become the champions of

those whom they ought to torture. Police officers and detectives

are continually assisting the escape of those they ought to

arrest. The clergy preach tolerance, and even sometimes condemn

the use of force, and the more educated among them try in their

sermons to avoid the very deception which is the basis of their

position and which it is their duty to support. Executioners

refuse to perform their functions, so that