Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/85

 wrong, as is the case in our upper classes, then a man cannot perform a single good action without disturbing the usual current of life. He can do a bad action without disturbing this current, but not a good one.

A man accustomed to the life of our well-to-do classes cannot lead a righteous life without first coming out of those conditions of evil in which he is immersed—he cannot begin to do good until he has ceased to do evil. It is impossible for a man living in luxury to lead a righteous life. All his efforts after goodness will be in vain until he changes his life, until he performs that work which stands first in sequence before him. A good life according to the pagan view, and still more according to the Christian view, is, and can be, measured in no other way than by the mathematical relation between love for self and love for others. The less there is of love for self with all the ensuing care about self and the selfish demands made upon the labour of others, and the more there is of love for others, with the resultant care for and labour bestowed upon others, the better is the life.

Thus has goodness of life been understood by all the sages of the world and by all true Christians, and in exactly the same way do all plain men understand it now. The more a man gives to others and the less he demands for himself, the better he is: the less he gives to others and the more he demands for himself, the worse he is.

And not only does a man become morally better the more love he has for others and the less for himself, but the less he loves himself the easier it becomes for him to be better, and contrariwise. The more a man loves himself, and, consequently, the more he demands labour from others, the less possibility is there for him to love and to work for others, and less not only in as many times as his love for himself has increased, but in some enormously greater degree less, as happens if we move the fulcrum of a lever from the long end to the short one: this will not only lengthen the long arm, but will also shorten the short one. So, also, if a man,