Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/457

 or his like again, if not to-day, then to-morrow. I do not even try to make my son see his wickedness. My son himself must discover it. But I strive to fill my son's soul with such instruction that the young libertine's temptations do not appeal to him; otherwise our resources, which are so small, are wasted in throwing away the pearls, and they go on trampling upon and rending, not you and me, N. N., but what is worse, extinguishing the little light that is dawning amid the darkness.

And here, by this digression, I come directly to the second and most important point of your letter. But how to open the eyes of men, to save them from the blandishments of the libertines, when evidence prevents this? ''How bring about the accomplishment of evangelical teaching? Ought I not to defend people if they ask me for help, even if it came about that they must be freed by violence, if before my eyes people are beaten and killed?'' To defend and free people by violence is not necessary, because this is impossible, and because to try to do good by violence, that is by wrong, is stupid.

My dear, please, for the sake of God's truth which you serve, do not make undue haste, do not lose patience, do not invent proofs of the justice of your opinion before you have thought over, not what I write you, but the Gospels, and not the Gospels as the word of Christ or God and the like, but the Gospels as the clearest, simplest, and most universally comprehensible and practical teaching of how each one of us and all men must live.

If before my eyes a mother is cutting her child to pieces, what must I do? Understand that the question is what ought I to do, that is, what is right and reasonable, and not what will be my first impulse in regard to it. My first impulse at a private insult is to avenge it; but the question comes: Is this reasonable? And exactly the same question arises whether it is reasonable to employ violence upon the mother who is cutting up her child. If the mother is murdering her child, what is it that is painful to me, and I consider wrong? The fact that the child is suffering, or the fact that