Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/333

 WHAT IS RELIGION? 317

Tlie same thing takes place in the domain of Juris- prudence. There would seem to be only one essential question : 'How is it that there are men who allow themselves to perpetrate violence on others^ to fleece them, confine them, execute them, send them to the wars, and so on ?' The solution of that question is very simple, if it be examined from the only point of view suitable to the subject — the religious. From a religious point of view, man must not and should not subject his neighbour to violence, and therefore only one thing is needful for the solution of the question — namely, to destroy all superstitions and sophistries which allow of violence, and to instil into men religious principles clearly excluding the possibility of violence.

But the advanced men, instead of doing this, devote all their wits to the task of hiding from others the possibility and necessity of such a solution. They write mountains of books about all sorts of laws : civil, criminal, police. Church, commercial, etc., and ex- pound and dispute about these — fully assured that they are doing something not only useful but very impor- tant. To the question, 'Why, among men who are naturally equal, may some judge, coerce, fleece, and execute others ?' — they give no reply, and do not even acknowledge the existence of such a question. Accord- ing to their doctrine, this violence is not committed by men, but by some abstraction called ITie State. And similarly, in all realms of knowledge, the learned men of to-day evade and are silent about the essential ques- tions, and hide the underlying contradictions.

In the realm of history, the only essential question is : ' How the workers (who form ytkhJ^^'^ ^^ ^^® whole of humanity) lived ?' To this question we get nothing like an answer ; the question is ignored, while whole mountains of books are written by historians of one school to tell of the stomach-aches of Louis XL, the horrors committed by Elizabeth of England or Ivan the Terrible of Russia, of who were their Ministers, and of what verses and comedies were written by literary men to amuse these Kings and their mistresses and Ministers.