Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/241

 side of the latter: the flesh vanquishes in us the spirit, the passions rule over our reason, the attractions of evil overpower the striving after the good; we love the good according to our nature, wish for it, and rejoice in it, but find no strength in us to do good; we do not love the evil according to our nature, and yet are irresistibly drawn to it; (e) the habit of what is good and holy is acquired by us after much effort and very slowly; but the habit of doing wrong is acquired without the least effort and exceedingly fast, and vice versa; (d) it is exceedingly difficult for us to discard a vice, to vanquish in us a passion, no matter how insignificant; but in order to change a virtue which we have acquired after many exploits, the smallest temptation is frequently sufficient. The same predominance of evil over good in the human race, that we observe now, has been observed by others at all times.”

Evidences from the Old Testament and the Epistles that the world is merged in evil. And farther: “Whence comes this discord in human nature? Whence this unnatural struggle of the forces in it and that striving, that unnatural predominance of the flesh over the spirit, of the passions over reason, that unnatural inclination toward evil, which outweighs the natural inclination toward the good? All the explanations which men have thought of for this are inconclusive, or even irrational; the only explanation which fully satisfies us is the one revelation offers us in its teaching about the original, ancestral sin.”

Then follows an analysis of these supposed explanations which men have invented. On the question of the original sin, of the sources of evil in the world, and of those explanations which the church offers, we must dwell at a greater length.

Among the number of the dogmas of the church, which have already been analyzed in the preceding parts and which will be analyzed farther on, we meet with dogmas