Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/41

32 a straight line, precisely the shortest between two points, or even when he has drawn quite a crooked and broken line, instead of a straight one, thus: —, it is said that he is compromising.

Even the man himself often regards it as a compromise, and is grieved by it. But a great confusion is taking place here, and in connection with the most important conceptions.

A sincere, truly-living man can never walk otherwise than thus: (may he only not walk thus: ).

Deviation from the law (the ideal) in its application in practice is not criminal, but inevitable, and is not a compromise in the sense of something wrong. A compromise is the acknowledgment beforehand that one is at present unable to fulfil the whole law—an entirely straight line; and only such a compromise is wrong. To admit beforehand, for instance, that violence, property, religious worship, divorce, etc., are sometimes necessary, then only is it that this happens: i.e. there appears a double confusion in the life.