Page:The Kingdom of God is within you, by Leo Tolstoy.pdf/178

 Maistre and Darwin, whose statements he likes so much that he quotes them again.

" [he writes to the editor of the Revue des Revues]: You ask me my view as to the possible success of the Universal Congress of Peace. I hold with Darwin that violent struggle is a law of nature which overrules all other laws; I hold with Joseph de Maistre that it is a divine law; two different ways of describing the same thing. If by some impossible chance a fraction of human society—all the civilized West, let us suppose—were to succeed in suspending the action of this law, some races of stronger instincts would undertake the task of putting it into action against us: those races would vindicate nature's reasoning against human reason; they would be successful, because the certainty of peace—I do not say peace, I say the certainty of peace—would, in half a century, engender a corruption and a decadence more destructive for mankind than the worst of wars. I believe that we must do with war—the criminal law of humanity—as with all our criminal laws, that is, soften them, put them in force as rarely as possible; use every effort to make their application unnecessary. But all the experience of history teaches us that they cannot be altogether suppressed so long as two men are left on earth, with bread, money, and a woman between them.

I should be very happy if the Congress would prove me in error. But I doubt if it can prove history, nature, and God in error also.

"I am, dear sir, etc.

""

This amounts to saying that history, human nature, and God show us that so long as there are two men, and bread, money and a woman—there will be war. That is to say that no progress will lead men to rise above the savage con-