Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/479

 must be done. They say the five commands of Christ: (1) not to look down on any one, or call any one a fool, or be angry with any one; (2) not to look on copulation as a source of satisfaction, not to desert husband or wife when once a union has been consummated; (3) not to bind oneself with an oath to any one, not to fetter one's free will; (4) to bear insults and violence and not to resist; and (5) not to consider any men as enemies, but to love your enemies as well as your neighbors—they say that these five commands of Christ all prescribe only what is necessary not to do, but that there are no commands or laws prescribing exactly what must be done; and indeed it may seem strange that in Christ's teaching there are no definite commands as to what must be done. But this seems strange only to one who does not believe in Christ's teaching itself, included, not in the five commands, but in the teaching itself of truth.

The teaching of truth expressed by Christ is not found in laws and commands; it is found in one thing, in the meaning that it gives to life. The meaning of this teaching is in this one thing, that life and the blessing of life are not in personal happiness, as people suppose, but in the service of God and man. And this position is not a prescription which should be carried out for the sake of receiving a reward, is not a mystic expression of something mysterious and incomprehensible, but is the revelation of a hitherto hidden law of life, is an indication that life can be a blessing only when it is thus understood. And therefore all Christ's positive teaching of truth is expressed in one thing: Love God, and thy neighbor as thyself. And there can be no explanations of this position. It is one thing because this one thing is all. Christ's laws and commands, like the Jewish and Buddhist laws and commands, are only indications of those conditions in which the temptations of the world seduce men from the true understanding of life. And therefore there may be many laws and commands, but there can be only one positive teaching of life, of what must be done.

The life of every man is a movement in a certain