Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/266

 sciousness of man and transferred to mythological history. What is said is: 7,200 years ago God created the free Adam, that is, man, and this man fell on account of his freedom and so God punished him and punished his posterity. The punishment consisted in this, that the men so punished were placed in the same position, in regard to the choice of good and evil, in which man had been before the punishment. Thus this teaching, which explains nothing in the essential question about the freedom of man, slanderously accuses God of injustice, which is so out of keeping with his goodness and justice. This injustice is, that the descendants are punished for somebody else’s sin. If the teaching about the fall explained anything to us, we might be able to understand the rational cause which has led to the transference of the question from the inner consciousness to the sphere of myths; but there are no explanations for the question about the freedom of man, and so there must be some other cause for it. This cause we only now find in the dogma of the redemption.

The church asserts that Christ has redeemed men from evil and death. If he has done so, there arises the question: Whence comes evil and death among men? And for this the dogma of the fall of man is invented. Christ the God has saved men from evil and death; but men are creatures of the same good God, so how could evil and death have come to men? To this question the myth of the fall of man gives an answer. Adam, having misused his freedom, did wrong and fell, and with him his posterity fell and lost immortality, the knowledge of God, and life without labour. Christ came and returned to humanity all that it had lost. Humanity became unailing, unworking, doing no evil, and undying. In this imaginary state humanity is already freed from sin, suffering, labour, and death, if only it believes in the redemption. It is this that the church teaches, and in this