Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/173

32 for in universal welfare there is no strife but union; no death but the transmission of life. God is not love itself, but in unrational beings He manifests Himself in self-love; in rational beings in universal love.

Nature, it is said, is economical with her forces — with the least effort she attains the greatest effects. So also with God. To establish on earth the kingdom of God, unity, mutual service, and to destroy enmity, God does not need to accomplish it Himself. He has implanted in Man his reason, which liberates love, and all that He desires will be done by man. God does His work through us. Time does not exist for Him, or exists only in eternity. Having implanted in man rational love, God has done all.

Why has He done it thus, through man, and not through Himself? The question is futile, and would never have suggested itself were we not all perverted by the absurd superstition of the "creation" of the world by God.

What follows when man recognises as his real Ego not his separate being, but God, who is living in him ? Firstly, such a man, not consciously desiring his own personal welfare, either will