Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/167

26 of conduct, can be the basis of morality. And so has it always been, and so it is.

Nothing better proves the existence of God than the attempts of the evolutionists to accept morality and deduce it from the struggle for existence.

It is obvious that morality cannot emanate from struggle; and yet they feel that we cannot do without it, acknowledge its existence, and endeavour to deduce it from their own propositions ; though to deduce it from the theory of evolution is as strange (or even more so) and illogical as to deduce it from the ordinances given by the Hebrew God on Sinai. Their mistake, which consists in denying the consciousness of one's spiritual self as a product of God, a particle of Him, without which there can be no rational view of life, —this mistake forces them to admit an unjustifiable and even contradictory mystery: to admit in the form of morality that same God whom they have excluded from their view of life.

The other day a Frenchman asked me, "Would it not be sufficient to base morality upon righteousness and beauty ?" — again that same God whom they are afraid to name.