Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/63

10 wives, and other customs of which only a record remains.

And there are the ideas of the present, instilled into men's minds hy education, by example, and by the general activity of all around them: ideas under the power of which they live at a given time; for instance, in our own day, the ideas of property, State organisation, trade, utilisation of domestic animals, etc.

And there are the ideas of the future, of which some are already approaching realisation, and are obliging people to change their way of life and to struggle against the former ways: such ideas in our world as those of freeing the labourers, of giving equality to women, and of disusing flesh food, etc.; while others, though already recognised, have not yet begun to struggle against the old forms of life: such in our time are the ideas (which we call ideals) of the extermination of violence, the arrangement of a communal system of property, of a universal religion, and of a general brotherhood of men.

And, therefore, every man and every homogeneous group of men, on whatever level they may stand, having behind them the worn-out remembrances of the past, and before them the ideals of the future, are always in a state of struggle between the moribund ideas of the present and the ideas of the future that are coming to life. It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea