Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/76

60 who considered salvation by works as insufficient. And together with this teaching of selfishness, which prescribes that you shall give to your neighbours only what you do not want yourself, they preach love, and recall with pathos the celebrated words of Paul in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, about love.

Notwithstanding that the Gospels overflow with demands for self-renunciation, with indications that self-renunciation is the first condition of Christian perfection; notwithstanding such dear expressions as: 'Whosoever will not take up his cross …' 'Whosoever hath not forsaken father and mother …' 'Whosoever shall lose his life …'—people assure themselves and others that it is possible to love men without renouncing that to which one is accustomed, or even what one pleases to consider becoming for one's self.

So speak the Church people; and those who reject not only the Church but also the Christian teaching (Freethinkers) think, speak, write, and act, in just the same way. These men assure themselves and others that without in the least diminishing their needs, without overcoming their lusts, they can serve mankind—i.e., lead a good life.

Men have thrown aside the heathen sequence of virtues; but, not assimilating the Christian teaching in its true significance, they have not accepted the Christian sequence, and are left quite without guidance.

In olden times, when there was no Christian teaching, all the teachers of life, beginning with Socrates, regarded as the first virtue of life, self-control— or ; and it was understood that every virtue must begin with and pass through this one. It was clear that a man who had no self-control, who had developed an immense number of desires and had yielded himself up to them, could not lead a good life. It was evident that before a man could even think of