Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/39

Rh It is necessary that there should occur that which took place with the law of serfdom when nobles and landowners became ashamed to possess serfs, the Government became ashamed of maintaining these unjust and cruel laws, when it became evident to the peasants themselves that an utterly unjustifiable iniquity was being committed upon them. The same must take place also with landed property. And this is necessary, not for any one class, however numerous it may be, but it is necessary for all classes, and not only for all classes and all men of any one country, but for the whole of mankind.

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting, by complaints and denunciation, by the formation of parties or the making of revolutions (wrote Henry George), but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought there cannot be right action, and when there is correct thought right action will follow.

The great work of the present for every man and every organisation of men who would improve social conditions is the work of education, the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. And in this work every one who can think may aid, first by forming clear ideas himself and then by endeavouring to arouse the thought of those with whom he comes in contact.

This is quite true; but, in order to serve this great cause, besides thought there must also be something more a religious feeling that feeling owing to which in the last century the owners of serfs recognised themselves culpable, and, notwithstanding personal loss and even ruin, sought the means of freeing themselves from the sin which weighed upon them.