Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/24

 every man is disclosed the law which he must follow. This law is concealed only from those who do not wish to follow it, and who, in order to avoid it, cast reason aside, and, instead of using it to become acquainted with truth, accept upon trust the assertions of those who, like them, have surrendered reason.

Yet the law which men should follow is so plain that it is accessible to every child, the more so as no man has to dis- cover anew the law of his life. Those who have lived before him have dis- covered and expressed it, and he has but to verify it with his reason, and to accept or refuse those propositions which he finds expressed in tradition ; that is, not, as recommended by those who would shirk the law, by verifying reason by tradition, but, on the contrary, by verifying tradition by reason.

Traditions may proceed from men, and be false; but reason indubitably comes from God, and cannot be false. Hence for the recognition and expression of truth no special extraordinary capacity is required ; one has but to believe that reason is not alone the loftiest sacred capacity of man, but, moreover, the sole instrument for the understanding of truth.

Particular intellectual qualities are needful, not for the acquirement and expression of truth, but for the concoction and expression of error. Having