Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/191

 LETTER TO PETER VERfCIN— II 175

iron ag-e, and progressing to its present material condi- tion, cannot liave made a mistake, but has followed an unalterable law of progress, and to turn back is, I will not say undesirable, but is as impossible as it is for us again to become monkeys ; and that the problem for a man of to-day is not to dream about what people used to be like, and how to revert to what they were, but it is — to serve the welfare of men now living. And what is necessary for the welfare of men now living is — that some men should not torment others or oppress them, should not deprive them of the products of their labour, nor compel them to work at things they do not need or may not have ; and chiefly that it should not be con- sidered possible or right, for the sake of any practical advantage or material success, to sacrifice the life or welfare of one^s neighbour, or, what is the same thing differently expressed, to infringe the law of love.

If people only knew that the aim of humanity is not material progress, but that tliat progress is an inevitable growth, and that the aim is simply the welfare of all men, and that this aim is superior to any material aim people can set themselves, then everything would fall into its proper place. And it is to this, people of our time should devote all their strength.

But to weep because men cannot now live without implements, like wild beasts, feeding themselves on fruit«, is as if I, an old man, were to weep for lack of teeth and black hair and the strength I had in my youth. What I have to do is, not to insert false teeth, dye my hair, and do gymnastics, but to try to live in the way natural for an old man, putting first — not worldly affairs, but the affairs of God — union and love, and admitting worldly affairs only in so far as they do not infringe God's work. The same should be done by humanity in its present stage of existence.

But to say that railroads, gas, electricity and book- printing are harmful, because for their sake human lives are sacrificed, is like saying that ploughing and sowing are harmful — merely because I ploughed a field at the wrong time, let it get overgrown with weeds.