Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/58

 could even picture its attainment by mankind, it would cease to be an ideal.

Such was Christ's ideal—the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth—an ideal already foretold by the prophets, of a time when all men will be taught of God, will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; when the lion will lie down with the lamb, and all will be united in love. The whole meaning of human life lies in progress towards that ideal; and therefore the striving towards the Christian ideal in its completeness, and towards chastity as one of its conditions, is far from rendering life impossible. On the contrary, the absence of that ideal would destroy progress, and with it the possibility of real life.

Arguments to the effect that the human race will end if men strive with all their might towards chastity, are like the one (sometimes actually used) to the eflfect that the race will perish if men try their best to substitute the love of friends, of enemies, and of all that lives, for the prevailing struggle for existence. Such arguments come from not understanding the difference between two methods of moral guidance.

As there are two ways of telling a traveller his road, so there are two methods of moral guidance for seekers after truth. One way consists in pointing out the objects that will be met on the road, by which the traveller can shape his course; the other way consists in only giving him the direction by a compass he carries, and on which he sees one invariable direction, and consequently is made aware of every divergence from it.

The first method of moral guidance is by externally defined rules: certain definite actions are indicated which a man must, or must not, perform.

'Keep the Sabbath;' 'Be circumcised;' 'Do not steal;' 'Abstain from wine;' 'Do not destroy life;' 'Give tithes to the poor;' 'Wash and pray five times daily;' 'Baptize;' 'Receive the Eucharist,' etc. Such are the ordinances of external religious teaching: Brahminical, Buddhist, Mohammedan or Jewish, and of Ecclesiasticism, falsely called Christianity.