Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/555

Rh sort is necessary. We are convinced that a man whose desires are developed to the highest degree attained in our society, a man who cannot live without satisfying a hundred unnecessary habits which have taken possession of him, can lead an altogether moral and righteous life. Looked at from any point of view,—the lowest, utilitarian, the higher, pagan, which demands justice, or especially from the highest, the Christian, which demands love,—it should surely be clear to every one that a man who uses for his own pleasure (with which he might easily dispense) the labor, often the painful labor, of others behaves badly, and that this is the very first wrong action he must cease to commit, if he wishes to live a good life.

From the utilitarian point of view such conduct is bad because, while forcing others to work for him, a man is always in an unstable position; he accustoms himself to the satisfaction of his desires and becomes their slave, while those who work for him do so with hatred and envy, and only await an opportunity to free themselves from the necessity of so working. Consequently such a man is always in danger of being left with deeply rooted habits, which he is unable to satisfy.

From the point of view of justice, such conduct is bad, because it is not well to employ for one's own pleasure the labor of other men, who cannot themselves afford a hundredth part of the pleasures enjoyed by him for whom they labor.

From the point of view of Christian love, it can hardly be necessary to prove that a man who loves others will give them his own labor rather than take from them for his own pleasure the fruit of their labor.

But these demands of utility, justice, and love are altogether ignored by the society of our day. With us the tendency to limit one's desires is regarded as neither the first, nor even the last, but as an altogether unnecessary, condition of a righteous life.

According to the prevailing and most widely spread teaching of life to-day, the augmentation of one's wants