Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/132

116 No one doubts that if men continue to snatch from one another the ownership of the soil and the products of their labour, the revenge of those who are deprived of the right to till the soil will not much longer be delayed, but the oppressed will retake with violence and vengeance all that of which they have been robbed. No one doubts that the arming of the nations will lead to terrible massacres, and to the ruin and degeneration of all the peoples enchained in the circle of armaments. No one doubts that the present order of things, if it continues for some dozens of years longer, will lead to a general breakdown. We have but to open our eyes, to see the abyss toward which we are advancing. But the prophecy cited by Jesus seems realized among the men of to-day: they have ears that hear not, eyes that see not, and an intelligence that does not understand.

Men of our day continue to live as they have lived, and do not cease to do things that must inevitably lead to their destruction. Moreover, men of our world recognise, if not the religious law of love, at least the moral rule of that Christian principle: not to do to others what one does not wish done to one's self; but they do not practise it. Evidently some greater reason exists preventing their doing what is to their advantage, what would save them from menacing dangers, and what is dictated by the law of their God and by their conscience. Must it be said that love applied to life is a chimera? If so, how is it that for so many centuries men have allowed themselves to be deceived by this unrealizable dream? It were time to see through it. But mankind can neither decide to follow the law of love in daily life, nor to abandon the idea. How is this to be explained? What is the reason of this contradiction lasting through centuries? It is not that the men of our time neither wish nor are able to do what is dictated alike by their good sense, by the dangers of their situation, and above all by the law of him whom they call God and by their conscience—but it is because they act just as M. Zola advises they are busy, they