Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/257

 PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT 241

Only one explanation of this amazing fact presents itself to me.

All human history, from the earliest times to our own day, may be considered as a movement of the con- sciousness, both of individuals and of homog^eneous groups, from lower ideas to higher ones.

The whole path travelled both by individuals and by homogeneous groups may be represented as a consecu- tive flight of steps from the lowest, on the level of animal life, to the highest attained by the conscious- ness of man at a given moment of history.

Each man, like each separate homogeneous group, nation, or State, always moved and moves up this ladder of ideas. Some portions of humanity are in front, others lag far behind, others, again — the majority — move somewhere between the most advanced and the most backward. But all, whatever stage they may have reached, are inevitably and irresistibly moving from lower to higher ideas. And always, at any given moment, both the individuals and the separate groups of people — advanced, middle, or backward — stand in three different relations to the three stages of ideas amid which they move.

Always, both for the individual and for the separate groups of people, there are the ideas of the past, which are worn out and have become strange to them, and to which they cannot revert : as, for instance, in our Christian world, the ideas of cannibalism, universal plunder, the rape of wives, and other customs of which only a record remains.

And there are the ideas of the present, instilled into men's minds by education, by example, and by the general activity of all around them ; ideas under the power of which they live at a given time : for instance, in our own day, the ideas of property, State organiza- tion, trade, utilization of domestic animals, etc.

And there are the ideas of the future, of which some are already approaching realization and are obliging people to change their way of life and to struggle against the former ways : such ideas in our world as