Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/71

 absence of the lower ones, which are a necessary condition of the higher, but even in company with the greatest vices; and consequently the very conception of what it is that constitutes a good life, has reached, in the minds of the majority of worldly people to-day, a state of the greatest confusion.

In our times people have quite lost the consciousness of the necessity of a sequence in the qualities a man must have to enable him to live a good life, and, as a consequence, they have lost the very conception of what constitutes a good life. This, it seems to me, has come about in the following way.

When Christianity replaced heathenism it put forth moral demands superior to the heathen ones, and at the same time (as was also the case with heathen morality) it necessarily laid down one indispensable order for the attainment of virtues—certain steps to the attainment of a righteous life.

Plato's virtues, beginning with self-control, advanced through courage and wisdom to justice; the Christian virtues, commencing with self-renunciation, rise through devotion to the will of God, to love.

Those who accepted Christianity seriously and strove to live righteous Christian lives, thus understood Christianity, and always began living rightly by renouncing their lusts; which renunciation included the self-control of the pagans.

But let it not be supposed that Christianity in this matter was only echoing the teachings of paganism; let me not be accused of degrading Christianity from its lofty place to the level of heathenism. Such an accusation would be unjust, for I regard the Christian teaching as the highest the world has known, and as quite different from heathenism. Christian teaching replaced pagan teaching simply because the former was different from, and superior to, the latter. But both Christian and pagan teaching alike, lead men toward