Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/348

 332 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

the establishment of good order, it is the establishment of evil.

If men of our Christian nations, still possessing some remnants of those religious principles which in spite of everything yet live in the people, had not before them the continual example of crime committed by those who have assumed the duty of guarding order and morality among men — the wars, executions, prisons, taxation, sale of intoxicants and of opium — they would never have thought of committing one one-hundredth of the evil deeds — the frauds, violence and murders — which they now commit in full confidence that such deeds are good and natural for men to commit.

The law of human life is such, that the only way to improve it, whether for the individual or for a society of men, is by means of inward, moral growth towards perfection. All attempts of men to better their lives by external action — by violence — serve as the most efficacious propaganda and example of evil, and there- fore not only do not improve life, but, on the contrary, increase the evil which, like a snowball, grows larger and larger, and removes men more and more from the only possible way of truly bettering their lives.

In proportion as the practice of violence and crime, committed in the name of the law by the guardians of order and morality, becomes more and more frequent and cruel, and is more and more justified by the hypno- tism of falsehood presented as religion, men will be more and more confirmed in the belief that the law of their life is not one of love and service to their fellows, but is one demanding that they should strive with, and devour, one another.

And the more they are confirmed in that thought, which degrades them to the plane of the beasts, the harder will it be to shake off the hypnotic trance in which they are living, and to accept as the basis of their life the true religion of our time, common to all humanity.

A vicious circle has been established : the absence of religion makes possible an animal life based on violence ;