Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/14

Rh meaning, or has only the dreadful meaning of hypocrisy.

How is one to act? What is one to do? Not to draw back means to lose one’s life, to be eaten by lice, to starve, to die, and—apparently—uselessly. To stop is to repudiate that for the sake of which one has acted, for which one has done whatever good has been accomplished. And one cannot repudiate it, for it is no invention of mine, or of Christ’s, that we are brothers and must serve each other; it is real fact, and when it has once entered you can never tear that consciousness out of the heart of man. How, then, is one to act? Is there no escape?

Let us imagine that these people, not dismayed by the necessity of sacrifice which brought them to a position inevitably leading to death, decided that this position arose from their having come to help the villagers with means too scanty for the work, and that the result would have been different, and they would have done more good, had they possessed more money. Let us imagine that they find resources, collect immense sums of money, and begin to help. Within a few weeks the same thing will repeat itself. Very soon all their means, however great, will have flowed into the pits formed by poverty, and the position will be the same as before.

But perhaps there is a third way?