Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/21

Rh been, within our memory, spitzruthens and slavery, which have also disappeared. But if we have outlived these dreadful customs and institutions, this does not prove that there do not exist institutions and customs amongst us which have become as abhorrent to enlightened reason and conscience as those which have in their time been abolished and have become for us only a dreadful remembrance. The way of human perfecting is endless, and at every moment of historical life there are superstitions, deceits, pernicious and evil institutions, already outlived by men and belonging to the past; there are others which appear to us in the far mists of the future; and there are some which we are now living through and whose overliving forms the object of our life. Such in our time is capital punishment and all punishment in general. Such is prostitution, such is flesh-eating, such is the work of militarism, war, and such is the nearest and most obvious evil, private property in land.

But as people never suddenly freed themselves from all the injustices which had become customary, nor even did so immediately after the more sensitive individual had recognised their iniquity, but advanced only by leaps, halts, resumings, and again new leaps towards freedom, similar to the struggles of childbirth, so has it been of late with the abolition of slavery, and so is it now with private property in land.

The evil and injustice of private property in land have been pointed out a thousand years ago by the prophets and sages of old. Later progressive thinkers of Europe have been oftener and oftener pointing it out. With special clearness did the