Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/238

SOCIALISM, STATE & CHRISTIAN is chopped, splinters will fly," that there must be victims, and that struggle is the law of humanity. And this view is, in fact, adopted and supported by certain people. But, side by side with it, there resounds ever louder and louder the protests of the dispossessed, the moans of the oppressed and the voices of the indignant raised in the name of the ideal of Christ, of truth and good; which ideal is acknowledged by our society only officially.

But any child can see that the greatest advantage would result to all if everyone were to interest himself in the common cause, and therefore to be provided for as a member of the whole. As, however, this is not the practice, as it is impossible to enter into the soul of everyone and control it, and as to persuade everybody is also impossible, or would take infinitely long, there remains but one other course: to assist the centralisation of labour, resulting from the subjugation of the many by the few, and at the same time to conceal from the dispossessed their inequality with the fortunate, to ward off their attacks, and to help and afford charity to the oppressed. And this is being done; but the concentration of capital increases more and more, and the inequality and oppression grow ever more cruel. And side by side with this, enlightenment becomes more general and the inequality and the cruelty of oppression more evident both to oppressed and oppressors.