Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/41

 24 carpenters, artists, tailors, scientists, physicians, generals, soldiers—are but the servants or parasites of the agriculturist. So that agriculture, besides being the most moral, healthy, joyful and necessary occupation, is also the highest of human activities, and alone gives men true independence.

The enormous majority of Russians are still living this most natural, moral and independent agricultural life; and this is the second, most important, circumstance, which makes it possible and natural for the Russian people, now that it is faced by the necessity of changing its relations towards power, to change them in no other way than by freeing themselves from the evil of all power, and simply ceasing to submit to any kind of Government.

These are the first two conditions, both of which are external.

The third condition, an inner one, is the religious feeling which according to the evidence of history, the observation of foreigners who have studied the Russian people, and especially the inner consciousness of every Russian, was and is a special characteristic of the Russian people.

In Western Europe—either because the Gospels printed in Latin were inaccessible to the people till the time of the Reformation, and have remained till now inaccessible to the whole Roman Catholic world, or because of the refined methods which the Papacy employs to hide true Christianity from the people, or in consequence of the specially practical character of those nations—there is no doubt that the essence of Christianity, not only among Roman Catholics but also among Lutherans, and even more in the Anglican Church, has long ceased to be a faith directing people's lives, and has been replaced by external forms, or among the higher classes by indifference and the rejection of all religion. For the vast majority of Russians, however—perhaps because the Gospels became accessible to them as early as the tenth century, or because of the coarse stupidity of the Russo-Greek Church, which tried clumsily and therefore vainly to hide the true meaning of the Christian teaching, or because of some peculiar trait in the Russian character, and because of their agricultural life—Christian