Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/21

 4 substitute for the clear and evident cause of a phenomenon one of its effects. The cause of this or that economic condition always was (and could not but be) the oppression of some men by others. Economic conditions are a result of violence, and cannot therefore be the cause of human relations. Evil men—the Cains—who loved idleness and were covetous, always attacked good men—the Abels—the tillers of the soil, and by killing them or threatening to kill them, profited by their toil. The good, gentle, and industrious people, instead of fighting their oppressors, considered it best to submit: partly because they did not wish to fight, and partly because they could not do so without interrupting their work of feeding themselves and their neighbours. On this oppression of the good by the evil, and not on any economic conditions, all existing human societies have been, and still are, based and built.

From the most ancient times, and among all the nations of the earth, the relations of the rulers to the ruled have been based on violence. But this relation, like everything else in the world, was and is continually changing. It changes from two causes. First because the more secure their power becomes and the longer it lasts, the more do those in power (the leisured classes who have power) grow depraved, unreasonable and cruel, and the more injurious to their subjects do their demands become. Secondly, because as those in power grow more depraved, their subjects see more and more clearly the harm and folly of submitting to such depraved power.

And those in power always become depraved: firstly, because such people, immoral by nature, and preferring idleness and violence to work, having grasped power and used it satisfy their lusts and saute, give themselves up more and more to these passions and vices; and secondly, because lusts and passions,