Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/399

Rh is highly regarded, nevertheless debauchery and crime are everywhere prevalent; in the early days, when laws were not so numerous or so carefully administered, there was a higher standard of virtue; but simultaneously with the study and application of the laws, there has been going on in the Roman Empire a steady deterioration of morals, accompanied by a vast increase in the number and variety of criminal offenses.

The only way to grapple with such crimes and evil is the Christian way of love. The heathen weapons of vengeance, punishment, and violence are inefficacious. All the preventive and remedial laws and punishments in the world will fail to eradicate people's propensities to do wrong. The root of the evil must be got at, and that is done by reaching the individual.

Most crimes are perpetrated by men who desire to get more of this world's goods than they can rightfully acquire. Some of these as,—for instance, monstrous commercial frauds—are perpetrated under the protection of the law, and those that are punishable are so cleverly managed that they often escape the penalty. Christianity takes away all incentive to such crimes, because those that practise it refuse to take more than what is strictly needed for the support of life, and thereby give up to others their free labor. So that the sight of accumulated wealth is not a temptation, and those that are driven to desperation by hunger find what they need without having to use violent means of obtaining it. Some criminals avoid them altogether; others join them, and gradually become useful workers.

As regards the crimes provoked by the play of passions: jealousy, carnal love, anger, and hatred. Laws never restrain such criminals; obstacles only make them worse; but Christianity teaches men to curb their passions by a life of love and labor, so that the spiritual principle will overcome the fleshly; and as Christianity spreads, the number of crimes of this sort will diminish.

There is still another class of crimes, he goes on to say, which have their root in a sincere desire to help humanity. The wish to alleviate the sufferings of an entire people will impel certain men called revolutionists to kill a tyrant with the notion that they are benefiting a majority. The origin of such crimes is a mistaken conviction that evil may be done in order that good may follow. Crimes of this description are not lessened by laws against them, they are provoked by them. The men that commit crimes of this kind have a noble motive—a desire to do good to others. Most men of this kind, though mistaken in their hopes and beliefs, are impelled by the noble motive of desire to do good to others, and they are ready to sacrifice their lives and all they have, and no danger or difficulty stands in their way. Punishment cannot restrain them; danger only gives them new life and spirit; if they suffer, they are regarded as martyrs, and earn the sympathy of mankind, and they stimulate others to go and do likewise.

The Christians, though they clearly perceive the error of such conspirators, appreciate their sincerity and self-denial, and recognize them as brethren on the ground of the positive good which they possess. Many of these "But tell me, Pamphilius, why men hold aloof from you in hostility, persecute you, hunt you down, kill you? How does your doctrine of love give rise to such discord?"