Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/344

 328 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

human race ; and tliat men are not yet completely brutalized is due to the fact that the best men of all nations hold to this religion and profess it, even if unconsciously, and only the hypnotic deception prac- tised fon men by the aid of the priests and scientists now hinders men from consciously adopting it.

The principles of this true religion are so natural to men, that as soon as they are put before them they are accepted as something quite familiar and self- evident. For us the true religion is Christianity in those of its principles in which it agrees, not with the external forms, but with the basic principles of Brah- manism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hebraism, Buddhism,, and even Mohammedanism. And just in the same way, for those who profess Brahmanism, Confucianism, etc. — true religion is that of which the basic principles agree with those of all other religions. And these principles are very simple, intelligible and clear.

These principles are : that there is a God, the origin of all things ; that in man dwells a spark from that Divine Origin, which man, by his way of living, can increase or decrease in himself ; that to increase this divine spark man must suppress his passions and increase love in himself ; and that the practical means to attain this result is to do to others as you would they should do to you. All these principles are common to Brahmanism, Hebraism, Confucianism, and Moham- medanism. (If Buddhism supplies no definition of God, it nevertheless acknowledges That with which man commingles, and into WTiich he is absorbed when he attains to Nirvana. So, That with which man com- mingles, or into Which he is absorbed in Nirvana, is the same Origin that is called God in Hebraism, Christ- ianity, and Mohammedanism.)

' But that is not religion,' is what men of to-day will say, who are accustomed to consider that the super- natural, i.e., the unmeaning, is the chief sign of religion. 'That is anything you like : philosophy, ethics, ratiocination — but not religion.' Religion, according to them, must be absurd and unintelligible