Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/461

 that love for goodness and truth is not lodged in me, and hatred of evil and falsehood, without some purpose. I cannot help expressing it, I cannot live in its name, and every step of my life is a battle with evil. And I am bound to fight, and I shall fight it with such means as have already been opened up to me, or will present themselves in the future. Propagandism is necessary among the people, connection with the dissidents, action on the government, and the like."

The feeling that suggests this is a good feeling, and I love you for it; but this same feeling incited Peter to draw his knife and cut off the servant's ear. Imagine to yourself what would have happened if Jesus had not restrained them: a riot would have taken place, Jesus' followers would have fled, and then they would have captured Jerusalem. They would have cut men down and they would have been cut down. What would have been the Christian teaching? It would not have been, and there would have been nothing for us to boast about; we should have been worse than the Aksakofs and Soloviofs.

In order that you may more freely express my thought, I will tell you what I think, in what I consider Christ's teaching consists─a teaching not misty and metaphysical, but a clear and vital teaching.

All say that the significance of Christianity lies in loving God and your neighbor as yourself. But what is this God? What is it to love? How can one love anything incomprehensible─God? What is one's neighbor? What am I myself?

These words have for me this meaning: to love God means to love truth; to love one's neighbor as one's self means to acknowledge the unity of the essence of one's soul and life with every other human life with eternal truth─God.

Thus it is for me.

But it is clear to me that these words, which really define nothing, may be understood otherwise, and that the majority cannot even understand them as I do. The principal thing is that these words neither for me