Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/29

 226 DEMANDS OF LOVE This lady can read several languages, has studied cosmography and history, knows of the existence of Voltaire, Renan, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and, therefore, she cannot believe "as a peasant woman believes." The peasant woman, in her belief in Our Mother, the heavenly Queen, Nicolas the righteous, our Father, the heavenly King who lives in the skies, etc. — believes in the highest conception to which her consciousness has attained, and this belief not only presents no contradiction to her understanding of life, but illuminates and elucidates its facts for her. Whereas for the lady this is impossible. She knows that the world was not created six thousand years ago; that mankind originated not from Adam and Eve, but from the development of the animal; she knows that besides Christians of her denomination there are people of other faiths five times as numerous ; she knows that the Christian teaching has been, and is, perverted, and has given birth to hundreds, thousands, of antagonistic sects, and has degenerated into the inquisition and wild fanaticism ; she knows how the councils were formed, at which the dogmas were instituted, knows that the same thing took place in Buddhism, with King Asoka, and in other religions ; she knows that religions are subject to the same law of development as organisms and states—that they