Page:Man or the State.djvu/132



"But we cannot live quietly occupying ourselves with the profession and teaching of Christianity when we see around us suffering people. We wish to serve them actively. For this we are ready to surrender our labor, even our lives," say people with more or less sincere indignation.

How do you know, I would answer these people, that you are called to serve men precisely by that method which appears to you the most useful and practical? What you say only shows that you have already decided that we cannot serve mankind by a Christian life, and that true service lies only in political activity, which attracts you.

All politicians think likewise, and they are all in opposition to each other, and therefore certainly cannot all be right. It would be very well if everyone could serve men as he pleased, but such is not the case, and there exists only one means of serving men and improving their condition. This sole means consists in the profession and realisation of a teaching from which flows the inner work of perfecting oneself. The self-perfecting of a true Christian, always living naturally amongst men and not avoiding them, consists in the establishment of better and even more loving relations between himself and other men. The establishment of loving relations between men cannot but improve their general conditions, although the form of this improvement remains unknown to man.

It is true that in serving through governmental activity, parliamentary or revolutionary, we can determine beforehand the results we wish to attain, and at the same time profit by all the advantages of a pleasant, luxurious life, and obtain a brilliant position, the approval of men, and great fame. If those who participate in such activity have indeed sometimes to suffer, it is such a possibility of suffering as in every strife is redeemed by the possibility of success. In the military activity, suffering and even death are still more possible, and yet only the least moral and the egotistic choose it.

On the other hand, the religious activity, in the first place, does not show us the results which it attains; and secondly,