Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/136

 120 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

and, above all, war — it has now become quite impos- sible to explain tlie raisou d'etre of such institutions. In our time men may continue to live a pagan life, but they cannot excuse it.

That men may cliange their way of living and feeling, they must first of all change tlieir way of thinking ; and tliat such a change may take place, they must pause, and attend to the things they ought to under- stand. To hear what is shouted to them by those who wish to save them, men who run singing towards a l»recipice must cease their clamour and must stop.

I>et men of our Christian world but stop their work and roficct for a moment on their condition, and tliey will involuntarily be led to acre})t the conce[)tion of life given by Cliristianity — a con('('|ttion so natural, so simple, and responding sd completely to the needs of the mind and the heart of humanity that it will arise, almost of itself, in the understanding of anyone who has freed himself, were it but for a moment, from the entangle- ments in which he is held by the complications of work — his own and that of others.

Tlie feast has been ready for eighteen centuries ; but one will not come because he has just bought some land, another because he has married, a third because he has to try his oxen, a fourth because he is building a railway, a factory, is engaged on missionary service, is busy in Parliament, in a bank, or on some scientific, artistic, or literary work. During 2,000 years no one has had leisure to do what Jesus advised at the begin- ning of his ministry : to look round him, think of tlie results of his work, and ask himself : ^^'hat am I } For what do I exist ? Js it possible that the power that has produced me, with my reason and my desire to love and be loved, has done this only to deceive me, — so that, having imagined the aim of life to be my personal well-being — that my life belonged to me, and I had the right to dispose of it as well as of the lives of others, as seemed best to me — I come at last to the conviction tliat this well-being (personal, family, or national) that I aimed at, cannot be attained, and that