Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/169

 RELIGION AND MORALITY 153

them. Just so morality comes from relierion. Special torms of social life produce morality only when the results of religious influeiice-»-wliich is morality — are put into them.

Stoves may be heated and g^ive warmth, or may not be heated anrl may remain cold ; just as social forms may contain morality, and may then have a moral influ- ence on society, or may not contain morality, and will then remain without influence on society.

Cliristian morality cainiot be based on a pa;nan or social conception of life, and cannot be deduced either from pliilosophy or from non-Cliristian science ; and not only can it not be deduce<l from them, but it can- not even be reconciled with them.

That is how the matter has always been understood by every serious and strictly consistent philosopliy and science, wliich said, <juite reasonably : 'If our proposi- tions do not tally witii morality, so much tlie worse for morality,' and continued their investij^^ations.

Ethical treatises not founde<l on reli^-ion, and even secular catechism's, are written and taujy;-ht, and people may suppose that humanity is g-uided by them ; but that only seems to be the case, because people are really guided not by tliose treatises and catechisms, but by tlie religions which tliey have always possessed and still possess ; whereas these treatises and catecliisms only counterfeit what flows naturally from religion.

The dictates of secular morality not based on a religious teaching are just like the action of a man who, though ignorant of music, should take the con- ductor's seat and begin to wave his arms before the experienced musicians who were performing. The music would continue for awhile by its own momentum, and because of what the musicians had learned from former conductors ; but evidently the waving of a stick by a man ignorant of music would not merely be use- less, but it would in course of time certainly confuse the musicians and disorganize the orchestra. A simi- lar confusion begins to take place in people's minds at the present time, in consequence of attempts made by