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

helmets, guns, and swords as

playthings? (The peasant’s children never play at soldiers, by

the way). Why do good men and even women, who have certainly no

interest in war, go into raptures over the various exploits of

Skobeloff and others, and vie with one another in glorifying them?

Why do men, who are not obliged to do so, and get no fee for it,

devote, like the marshals of nobility in Russia, whole months of

toil to a business physically disagreeable and morally painful—

the enrolling of conscripts? Why do all kings and emperors wear

the military uniform? Why do they all hold military reviews, why

do they organize maneuvers, distribute rewards to the military,

and raise monuments to generals and successful commanders? Why do

rich men of independent position consider it an honor to perform a

valet’s duties in attendance on crowned personages, flattering

them and cringing to them and pretending to believe in their

peculiar superiority? Why do men who have ceased to believe in

the superstitions of the mediaeval Church, and who could not

possibly believe in them seriously and consistently, pretend to

believe in and give their support to the demoralizing and

blasphemous institution of the church? Why is it that not only

governments but private persons of the higher classes, try so

jealously to maintain the ignorance of the people? Why do they

fall with such fury on any effort at breaking down religious

superstitions or really enlightening the people? Why do

historians, novelists, and poets, who have no hope of gaining

anything by their flatteries, make heroes of kings, emperors, and

conquerors of past times? Why do men, who call themselves

learned, dedicate whole lifetimes to making theories to prove that

violence employed by authority against the people is not violence

at all, but a special right? One often wonders why a fashionable

lady or an artist, who, one would think, would take no interest in

political or military questions, should always condemn strikes of

working people, and defend war; and should always be found without

hesitation opposed to the one, favorable to the other.

 

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher

classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain

and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which

they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly

not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to

defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not

have her entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist

certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the

troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures. But

instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them

unerringly. And it is precisely this instinct which leads all

men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political,

and economic institutions which are to their advantage.

 

But is it possible that the higher classes support the existing

order of things simply because it is to their advantage? Cannot

they see that this order of things is essentially irrational, that

it is no longer consistent with the stage of moral development

attained by people, and with public opinion, and that it is

fraught with perils? The governing classes, or at least the good,

honest, and intelligent people of them, cannot but suffer from

these fundamental inconsistencies, and see the dangers with which

they are threatened. And is it possible that all the millions of

the lower classes can feel easy in conscience when they commit

such obviously evil deeds as torture and murder from fear of

punishment? Indeed, it could not be so, neither the former nor

the latter could fail to see the irrationality of their conduct,

if the complexity of government organization did not obscure the

unnatural senselessness of their actions.

 

So many instigate, assist, or sanction the commission of every one

of these actions that no one who has a hand in them feels himself

morally responsible for it.

 

It is the custom among assassins to oblige all the witnesses of a

murder to strike the murdered victim, that the responsibility may

be divided among as large a number of people as possible. The

same principle in different forms is applied under the government

organization in the perpetration of the crimes, without which no

government organization could exist. Rulers always try to

implicate as many citizens as possible in all the crimes committed

in their support.

 

Of late this tendency has been expressed in a very obvious manner

by the obligation of all citizens to take part in legal processes

as jurors, in the army as soldiers, in the local government, or

legislative assembly, as electors or members.

 

Just as in a wicker basket all the ends are so hidden away that it

is hard to find them, in the state organization the responsibility

for the crimes committed is so hidden away that men will commit

the most atrocious acts without seeing their responsibility for

them.

 

In ancient times tyrants got credit for the crimes they committed,

but in our day the most atrocious infamies, inconceivable under

the Neros, are perpetrated and no one gets blamed for them.

 

One set of people have suggested, another set have proposed, a

third have reported, a fourth have decided, a fifth have

confirmed, a sixth have given the order, and a seventh set of men

have carried it out. They hang, they flog to death women, old

men, and innocent people, as was done recently among us in Russia

at the Yuzovsky factory, and is always being done everywhere in

Europe and America in the struggle with the anarchists and all

other rebels against the existing order; they shoot and hang men

by hundreds and thousands, or massacre millions in war, or break

men’s hearts in solitary confinement, and ruin their souls in the

corruption of a soldier’s life, and no one is responsible.

 

At the bottom of the social scale soldiers, armed with guns,

pistols, and sabers, injure and murder people, and compel men

through these means to enter the army, and are absolutely

convinced that the responsibility for the actions rests solely on

the officers who command them.

 

At the top of the scale—the Tzars, presidents, ministers, and

parliaments decree these tortures and murders and military

conscription, and are fully convinced that since they are either

placed in authority by the grace of God or by the society they

govern, which demands such decrees from them, they cannot be held

responsible. Between these two extremes are the intermediary

personages who superintend the murders and other acts of violence,

and are fully convinced that the responsibility is taken off their

shoulders partly by their superiors who have given the order,

partly by the fact that such orders are expected from them by all

who are at the bottom of the scale.

 

The authority who gives the orders and the authority who executes

them at the two extreme ends of the state organization, meet

together like the two ends of a ring; they support and rest on one

another and inclose all that lies within the ring.

 

Without the conviction that there is a person or persons who will

take the whole responsibility of his acts, not one soldier would

ever lift a hand to commit a murder or other deed of violence.

 

Without the conviction that it is expected by the whole people not

a single king, emperor, president, or parliament would order

murders or acts of violence.

 

Without the conviction that there are persons of a higher grade

who will take the responsibility, and people of a lower grade who

require such acts for their welfare, not one of the intermediate

class would superintend such deeds.

 

The state is so organized that wherever a man is placed in the

social scale, his irresponsibility is the same. The higher his

grade the more he is under the influence of demands from below,

and the less he is controlled by orders from above, and VICE

VERSA.

 

All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the

responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier

on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on

the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the

nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on

the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar, and

the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and

peasants. But that is not all. Besides the fact that men get rid

of the sense of responsibility for their actions in this way, they

lose their moral sense of responsibility also, by the fact that in

forming themselves into a state organization they persuade

themselves and each other so continually, and so indefatigably,

that they are not all equal, but “as the stars apart,” that they

come to believe it genuinely themselves. Thus some are persuaded

that they are not simple people like everyone else, but special

people who are to be specially honored. It is instilled into

another set of men by every possible means that they are inferior

to others, and therefore must submit without a murmur to every

order given them by their superiors.

 

On this inequality, above all, on the elevation of some and the

degradation of others, rests the capacity men have of being blind

to the insanity of the existing order of life, and all the cruelty

and criminality of the deception practiced by one set of men on

another.

 

Those in whom the idea has been instilled that they are invested

with a special supernatural grandeur and consequence, are so

intoxicated with a sense of their own imaginary dignity that they

cease to feel their responsibility for what they do.

 

While those, on the other hand, in whom the idea is fostered that

they are inferior animals, bound to obey their superiors in

everything, fall, through this perpetual humiliation, into a

strange condition of stupefied servility, and in this stupefied

state do not see the significance of their actions and lose all

consciousness of responsibility for what they do.

 

The intermediate class, who obey the orders of their superiors on

the one hand and regard themselves as superior beings on the

other, are intoxicated by power and stupefied by servility at the

same time and so lose the sense of their responsibility.

 

One need only glance during a review at the commander-in-chief,

intoxicated with self-importance, followed by his retinue, all on

magnificent and gayly appareled horses, in splendid uniforms and

wearing decorations, and see how they ride to the harmonious and

solemn strains of music before the ranks of soldiers, all

presenting arms and petrified with servility. One need only

glance at this spectacle to understand that at such moments, when

they are in a state of the most complete intoxication, commander-in-chief, soldiers, and intermediate officers alike, would be

capable of committing crimes of which they would never dream under

other conditions.

 

The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews,

religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and

temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic,

permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any

kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest

police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in

subjection to authority and in a state of stupefied servility.

The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their

own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and

importance to those they serve.

 

It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the

intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men

associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts

opposed