Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/66

 Rh lusts, breeding like rabbits, and establishing factories in towns for the production of chemical foods to feed their increasing generation, and living in these towns without plants or animals—why should we not imagine chaste people, struggling against their lusts, living in loving communion with their neighbours amid fruitful fields, gardens and woods, with tame, well-fed animal friends; only with this difference from their present condition, that they do not consider the land to be anyone's private property, do not themselves belong to any particular nation, do not pay taxes or duties, prepare for war, or fight anybody; but on the contrary, have more and more of peaceful intercourse with every race?

To imagine the life of men like that, nothing need be invented or altered or added in one's imagination to the lives of the agricultural races we know in China, Russia, India, Canada, Algeria, Egypt and Australia.

To picture such life to ourselves, one need not imagine any kind of cunning or out-of-the-way arrangement, but need only imagine to oneself men acknowleding no other supreme law but the universal law expressed alike in the Brahmin, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist and Christian religions—the law of love to God and to one's neighbour.

To imagine such a life we need not imagine men as some new kind of being—virtuous angels. They will be just as they now are, with all weaknesses and passions natural to them; they will sin, will perhaps quarrel, and commit adultery, and take away other people's property, and even slay; but all this will be the exception and not, as now, the rule. Their life will be quite different owing to the one fact that they will not consider organised violence a good thing and a necessary condition of life, and will not be trained amiss by hearing the evil deeds of Governments represented as good actions.

Their life will be quite different, because there will no longer be that impediment to preaching and teaching the spirit of goodness, love, and submission to the will of God, that exists as