Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/62

 Rh another change in their relation towards power—more natural to them—is now preparing, a change which will consist in their moral and religious emancipation from power?

Why may not such a change be possible among any people, and why not at present among the Russians? Why, instead of that irritated, egotistical mood of mutual strife, fear and hatred, which has now seized all nations, instead of all this preaching of lies, immorality, and violence now so strenuously circulated among all nations by newspapers, books, speeches, and actions—why should not a religious, humane, reasonable, loving mood seize the minds of all nations, and of the Russian nation in particular, after all the sins, sufferings and terrors they have lived through: a state of mind which would make them see all the horror of submitting to the power under which they live, and feel the joyful possibility of a reasonable, loving life without violence and without power?

Why should not the consciousness of the possibility and necessity of emancipating themselves from the sin of power, and of establishing unity among men based on mutual agreement and on respect and love between man and man, be now ripening, just as the movement now manifesting itself in the Revolution prepared by decades of influence tending in one particular direction?

Some ten or fifteen years ago the gifted French writer, Dumas fils, wrote a letter to Zola in which he, a talented and intelligent man chiefly occupied with æsthetic and social questions, when already old, uttered some strikingly prophetic words. Truly the spirit of God "bloweth where it listeth"! This is what he wrote:—

"The soul, too, is incessantly at work, ever evolving toward light and truth. And so long as it has not reached full light and conquered the whole truth, it will continue to torment man.

"Well! The soul never so harassed man, never so dominated him, as is does to-day. It is as though it were in the air we all breathe. The few isolated souls that had separately desired the regeneration of society have, little by little, sought one another out, beckoned one another, drawn nearer, united, comprehended one another, and formed a group, a centre of attraction, toward