Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/113

 EN have only to understand that what is given out to them for public opinion, what is maintained by complicated, strenuous, and artificial means, is not public opinion, but only the dead relic of public opinion that once existed; above all, they have but to believe in themselves, in the fact that what is recognized by them in the depths of their souls, that what craves expression in everyone and is not freely uttered only because it runs counter to the existing social opinion, is the force which will change the world, and that to manifest that force is man's true vocation; men have but to believe that the truth is not what is said by men about them, but what a man's conscience, that is God, tells him—and the false, artificially maintained public opinion will vanish instantaneously and the true opinion will be established.

If only men would say what they think, and not say what they do not think, all the superstitions that come from patriotism, and all the evil feelings and acts of violence that are based upon it, would drop away at once. There would be an end of the hatred fanned by Govern-