Page:The Kingdom of God is within you, by Leo Tolstoy.pdf/271

 an experiment to see whether public opinion is or is not able to replace the protection given by authority."

A French writer, forgotten now, Alphonse Karr, said somewhere, trying to show the impossibility of doing away with the death penalty: " Que messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner l'exemple." Often have I heard this bon mot repeated by men who thought that these words were a witty and convincing argument against the abolition of capital punishment. And yet all the erroneousness of the argument of those who consider that governments can not give up the use oft force till all people are capable of doing the same, could not be more clearly expressed than it is in that epigram.

"Let the murderers," say the champions of state violence, "set us the example by giving up murder and then we will give it up." But the murderers say just the same, only with much more right. They say: " Let those who have undertaken to teach us and guide us set us the example of giving up legal murder, and then we will imitate them."

And they say this, not as a jest, but seriously, because it is the actual state of the case.

"We cannot give up the use of violence, because we are surrounded by violent ruffians." Nothing in our days hinders the progress of humanity and the establishment of the organization corresponding to its present develop ment more than this false reasoning. Those in authority are convinced that men are only guided and only progress through the use of force, and therefore they confidently make use of it to support the existing organization. The existing order is maintained, not by force, but by public opinion, the action of which is disturbed by the use of force. So that the effect of using force is to disturb and to weaken the very thing it tries to maintain.

Violence, even in the most favorable case, when it is not used simply for some personal aims of those in power,