Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/345

 WHAT IS RELIGION? 329

{Credo quia ■ ahsurdum). Yet it was only from these very principles, or rather in consequence of their being preached as religious doctrines, that — by a long process of perversion — all those absurd miracles and super- natural occurrences were elaborated, which are now considered to be the fundamental signs of every religion. To assert that the supernatural and irrational form the essential cliaracteristic of relig:ion is like observing only rotten apples, and then asserting that a flabby bitterness and a harmful effect on the stomach are the prime characteristics of the fruit called Apple.

Religion is the definition of man's relation to the Source of all things, and of man's purpose in life which results from that relation ; and it supplies rules of conduct resulting from that purpose. And the universal religion whose first principles are alike in all the faiths, fully meets the demands of this understand- ing of religion. It defines the relation of man to God, as being that of a part to the whole ; from this relation it deduces man's purpose, which is to increase the divine element in himself ; and this purpose involves practical demands on man, in accord with the rule : Do to others as you wish them to do to you.

People often doubt, and I myself at one time doubted, whether such an abstract rule as. Do to others as you wish them to do to you, can be as obligatory a rule and guide for action as the simpler rules : to fast, pray, and take communion, etc. But an irrefutable reply to that doubt is supplied, for instance, by the spiritual condi- tion of a Russian peasant who would rather die than spit out the Sacrament on to a manure-heap, but who yet, at the command of men, is ready to kill his brothers.

MTiy should demands flowing from the rule of doing to others as you wish them to do to you — such, for instance, as : not killing one's brother man, not reviling, not committing adultery, not revenging one's self, not taking advantage of the need of one's brethren to satisfy one's own caprice, and many others, — why should not they be instilled as forcibly, and become as