Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/483

 reason, should earn his own daily food. This law is mandatory. Such was this law even before the meaning of life was made plain to men in the teaching of the truth.

But in the loftiest consciousness of the meaning of life discovered by Christ, the law of manual labor, still remaining true, stands as a part of the only positive doctrine of Christ concerning the service of others, and receives the significance, not of a positive, but of a prohibitory, law. This law, in the Christian conscience, points only to an ancient temptation of men, to what a man ought not to do if he would avoid departing from the path of the true life.

For a man of the Old Testament, who did not acknowledge the teaching of the truth, this law has the same significance: earn your bread with your own hands. For the Christian its significance is negative. This law says: Do not suppose it possible to serve men while swallowing up the labor of others, and while you do not earn your subsistence with your own hands. This law, for the Christian, points to one of the oldest and most terrible temptations that people suffer from. Against this temptation, terrible in its consequences, and so very ancient that we with difficulty may recognize this temptation, not as a natural quality of a man, but as a deception, this doctrine of Bondaref is directed,—a doctrine obligatory on the Old Testament man who believes in the Scriptures, and the Christian who believes in the Scriptures, and the man that does not believe in the Scriptures, but follows his reason alone, and for the man that recognizes the teaching of the truth.

Reader and dear brother, whoever you are, I love you and not only do not wish to offend or affront you, to bring evil into your life, but I do wish one thing, and that is to serve you.

I might write much, and I should like to write much, in order to prove the truth of this position, and to refute the various and complicated arguments against it, which are on the lips of each one of us. We know that we are