Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/498

 all our ills proceed from the fact that we do not accept its guidance; but the more difficult it becomes not to see this, the greater are the efforts made by some people to persuade us to do as they do, to close our eyes so as not to see it. In order to be absolutely certain to arrive safely in port, we ought, before all else, to throw overboard the compass, say they, and forge ahead. Men of our Christian society resemble people who, desiring to pull down some object which annoys them, drag at it in opposite directions, and have no time to agree as to the direction in which they ought to pull. It is only necessary that a man of our day should cease his activity for a moment and reflect,—comparing the demands of his reason and of his heart with the actual conditions of his life,—in order to perceive that his whole life and his every action are in incessant and outrageous contradiction to his reason and his heart. If you were to inquire separately of every civilized human being what are the most moral bases of his conduct, nearly every man would tell you that they are the Christian principles, or at any rate those of justice. In saying this men are sincere. If they acted according to their conscience, men would live as Christians; but it is only necessary to watch them to see that they live like wild beasts. So that for the great majority of men in the Christian world, the organization of their life is not the result of their way of seeing and feeling, but of certain forms which were once necessary, but which now only survive by reason of the inertia of social life.

in past times,—when the evils produced by the pagan way of life were not so evident as now, and, more important still, the Christian principles were not so generally accepted,—men could consciously uphold the bondage of the workers, the oppression of man by man, penal law, and, above all, war,—it has become completely impossible at the present time to explain the raison d'etre of all these institutions.