Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/198

 182 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

of his life ; but, instead of obeying that law, he prefers to fancy that he knows what is necessary, advantageous, and well-timed for men and for all the world — this world which continually changes and evolves — and for the sake of some advantage (which each man pictures after his own fancy) he decides that he and other people should, temporarily, abandon the indubitable law given to liim and to all men, and should act, not as he would tliat others should act towards him, nor to bring loe into the world — but should do violence, imprison, kill, and bring into the world enmity whenever it seems to him advisable to do so. And he decides to act thus, though he knows that the most horrible cruelties, martyrdoms, and murders— from the Inquisition, and the murders and liorrors of all the revolutions, down to the brutalities of contemporary Anarchists and their slaughter by the established authorities — have only occurred because people will imagine that they know what is necessary for mankind and for the world. But are there not always, at any given moment, two oppo- site parties, each of which declares that it is necessary to use force against the other .*' The * law-and-order ' party against the Anarchist, the Anarchist against the ' law-and-order ' men ; English against Americans, and Americans against English ; Germans against English, and English against Germans, and so forth in all possible combinations and rearrangements.

A man enlightened by Christianity sees that he lias no reason to abandon the law of God, given to enable him to walk sure-footedly through life, in order to follow the chance, inconstant, and often contradictory demands of men. But besides this, if he has lived a Christian life for some time and has developed in him- self a moral Christian sensibility, he literally cannot act as people demand of him. Not his reason alone but his feeling also makes it impossible.

To many people of our society it would be impossible to torture or kill a baby, even if they were told that by so doing they could save hundreds of other people. And iu the same way, a man who has developed a