Page:The Kingdom of God is within you, by Leo Tolstoy.pdf/338

 before the ranks of soldiers, all presenting arms and petrified with servility. One need only glance at this spectacle to understand that at such moments, when they are in a state of the most complete intoxication, commander-inchief, soldiers, and intermediate officers alike, would be capable of committing crimes of which they would never dream under other conditions.

The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews, religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic, permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in subjection to authority and in state of stupefied servility. The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and importance to those they serve.

It principally through this false idea of inequality, and the intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men associated in a state organization are enabled commit acts opposed to their conscience without the least scruple or remorse.

Under the influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no longer simply men as they are, but some special beings—noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or soldiers—no longer bound by ordinary human duties, but by other duties far more weighty—the peculiar duties of nobleman, merchant, governor, judge, officer, tzar, minister, or soldier.

Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only because he fancied himself not simple man, having the same rights to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone else, but a great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under the influence of the intoxication