Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/34

 Rh comforts of the wealthy classes and for fighting (that is, slaughtering men) which the enslaved masses for several generations have been forced to produce, are something very important and almost holy, called, in the language of those who uphold such a mode of life, "culture," or even more grandly, "civilisation."

As every creed has a science of its own, so this faith in "civilisation" has a science—Sociology, the one aim of which is to justify the false and desperate position in which the people of the Western world now find themselves. The object of this science is to prove that all these inventions: ironclads, telegraphs, nitroglycerine bombs, photographs, electric railways, and all sorts of similar foolish and nasty inventions that stupefy the people and are designed to increase the comforts of the idle classes and to protect them by force, not only represent something good, but even something sacred, predetermined by supreme unalterable laws; and that, therefore, the depravity they call "civilisation" is a necessary condition of human life, and must inevitably be adopted by all mankind.

And this faith is just as blind as any other faith, and just as unshakable and self-assured.

Any other position may be disputed and argued about; but "civilisation"—meaning those inventions and those forms of life among which we are living, and all the follies and nastiness which we produce—is an indubitable blessing, beyond all discussion. Everything that disturbs faith in civilisation is a lie; everything that supports this faith is sacred truth.

This faith and its attendant science cause the Western nations not to wish to see or to acknowledge that the ruinous path they are following leads to inevitable destruction. The so-called "most advanced" among them, cheer themselves with the thought that without abandoning this path they can reach, not destruction, but the highest bliss. They assure themselves that, by again employing violence such as brought them to their present ruinous condition, somehow or other, from among people now striving to obtain the greatest material, animal welfare for themselves, men