Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/495

 will retake with violence and vengeance what they have been deprived of. Every one knows also that the preparations for war made by the different nations lead on to terrible massacres, to the ruin and degeneration of all the peoples who participate in this circle of armaments. No one doubts but that if the present order of things be prolonged for some dozens of years, the result will be ruin, imminent and general. We have only to open our eyes to see the abyss toward which we are advancing. But it seems that Christ's prophecy is fulfilled among the men of to-day; they have ears to be deaf with, and eyes to be blind with, they have reason to misunderstand with.

The men of to-day continue to live as they have always lived, and do not leave off doing what must inevitably lead to their ruin. Moreover, the men of our Christian society acknowledge, if not the religious law of love, at least the moral obligation of the Christian principle, "not to do to others what they would not that others do to them," but they do not act upon it. Evidently some secret but overwhelming reason prevents them from doing what is to their advantage—what would save them from the dangers that menace them, and what the law of their God and their conscience alike dictate to them. Are we to conclude that love applied to life is a chimera? If so, how is it that for so many centuries men have allowed themselves to be deluded by this unrealizable dream? It must be high time to recognize its futility. But mankind can neither resolve to follow the law of love in their lives nor to give up the idea.

Why is this? What is the reason of this contradiction, enduring so many centuries ? It is not because men of our day lack either the desire or the possibility to do what is dictated to them, both by their common sense and by the danger of their position, and above all, by the law of that which they speak of as God and their conscience. But it is just because they are doing what M. Zola advises them to do: they are so busy, they are all so engrossed in work commenced long ago, and it is impossible for them to pause to collect their thoughts