I. Lef Nikolayevitch Tolstoi was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, district of Krapivna, government of Tula. From 1843 to 1846 he studied in Kazan at first oriental languages, then jurisprudence; from 1847 to 1848, in St. Petersburg, jurisprudence. After a lengthy stay at Yasnaya Polyana, he entered an artillery regiment in the Caucasus, in 1851; he became an officer, remained in the Caucasus till 1853, then served in the Crimean war, and left the army in 1855.
Tolstoi now lived at first in St. Petersburg. In 1857 he took a lengthy tour in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. After his return he lived mostly in Moscow till 1860. In 1860-1861 he traveled in Germany, France, Italy, England, and Belgium; in Brussels he made the acquaintance of Proudhon.
Since 1861 Tolstoi has lived almost uninterruptedly at Yasnaya Polyana, as at once agriculturist and author.
Tolstoi has published numerous works; his works up to 1878 are mostly stories, among which the two novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" are notable; his later works are mostly of a philosophical nature.
2. Of special importance for Tolstoi's teaching about law, the State, and property are his works "My Confession" (1879), "The Gospel in Brief" (1880), "What I Believe" (1884) [also known in English as "My Religion"], "What Shall We Do Then?" (1885), "On Life" (1887), "The Kingdom of God is Within You; or, Christianity not a mystical doctrine, but a new life-conception" (1893).
3. Tolstoi does not call his teaching about law, the State, and property "Anarchism." He designates as "Anarchism" the teaching which sets up as its goal a life without government and wishes to see this realized by the application of force.[859]
According to Tolstoi our supreme law is love; from this he derives the commandment not to resist evil by force.
1. Tolstoi designates "Christianity"[860]as his basis; but by Christianity he means not the doctrine of one of the Christian churches, neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic nor that of any of the Protestant bodies,[861]but the pure teaching of Christ.[862]
"Strange as it may sound, the churches have always been not merely alien but downright hostile to the teaching of Christ, and they must needs be so. The churches are not, as many think, institutions that are based on a Christian origin and have only erred a little from the right way; the churches as such, asassociations that assert their infallibility, are anti-Christian institutions. The Christian churches and Christianity have no fellowship except in name; nay, the two are utterly opposite and hostile elements. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life."[863]The church has "so transformed Christ's teaching to suit the world that there no longer resulted from it any demands, and that men could go on living as they had hitherto lived. The church yielded to the world, and, having yielded, followed it. The world did everything that it chose, and left the church to hobble after as well as it could with its teachings about the meaning of life. The world led its life, contrary to Christ's teaching in each and every point, and the church contrived subtleties to demonstrate that in living contrary to Christ's law men were living in harmony with it. And it ended in the world's beginning to lead a life worse than the life of the heathen, and the church's daring not only to justify such a life but even to assert that this was precisely what corresponded to Christ's teaching."[864]
Particularly different from Christ's teaching is the church "creed,"[865]—that is, the totality of the utterly incomprehensible and therefore useless "dogmas."[866]"Of a God, external creator, origin of all origins, we know nothing";[867]"God is the spirit in man,"[868]"his conscience,"[869]"the knowledge of life";[870]"every man recognizes in himself a free rational spiritindependent of the flesh: this spirit is what we call God."[871]Christ was a man,[872]"the son of an unknown father; as he did not know his father, in his childhood he called God his father";[873]and he was a son of God as to his spirit, as every man is a son of God,[874]he embodied "Man confessing his sonship of God."[875]Those who "assert that Christ professed to redeem with his blood mankind fallen by Adam, that God is a trinity, that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and that it passes to the priest by the laying on of hands, that seven mysteries are necessary to salvation, and so forth,"[876]"preach doctrines utterly alien to Christ."[877]"Never did Christ with a single word attest the personal resurrection and the immortality of man beyond the grave,"[878]which indeed is "a very low and coarse idea";[879]the Ascension and the Resurrection are to be counted among "the most objectionable miracles."[880]
Tolstoi accepts Christ's teaching as valid not on the ground of faith in a revelation, but solely for its rationality. Faith in a revelation "was the main reason why the teaching was at first misunderstood and later mutilated outright."[881]Faith in Christ is "not a trusting in something related to Christ, but the knowledge of the truth."[882]
"'There is a law of evolution, and therefore one must live only his own personal life and leave the restto the law of evolution,' is the last word of the refined culture of our day, and, at the same time, of that obscuration of consciousness to which the cultured classes are a prey."[883]But "human life, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, is an unbroken series of actions; man must daily choose out from hundreds of actions possible to him those actions which he will perform; therefore, man cannot live without something to guide the choice of his actions."[884]Now, reason alone can offer him this guide. "Reason is that law, recognized by man, according to which his life is to be accomplished."[885]"If there is no higher reason,—and such there is not, nor can anything prove its existence,—then my reason is the supreme judge of my life."[886]"The ever-increasing subjugation"[887]"of the bestial personality to the rational consciousness"[888]is "the true life,"[889]is "life"[890]as opposed to mere "existence."[891]
"It used to be said, 'Do not argue, but believe in the duty that we have prescribed to you; reason will deceive you; faith alone will bring you the true happiness of life.' And the man exerted himself to believe, and he believed. But intercourse with other men showed him that in many cases these believed something quite different, and asserted that this other faith bestowed the highest happiness. It has become unavoidable to decide the question which of the many faiths is the right one; and only reason can decide this."[892]"If the Buddhist who has learned to knowIslam remains a Buddhist, he is no longer a Buddhist in faith but in reason. As soon as another faith comes up before him, and with it the question whether to reject his faith or this other, reason alone can give him an answer. If he has learned to know Islam and has still remained a Buddhist, then rational conviction has taken the place of his former blind faith in Buddha."[893]"Man recognizes truth only by reason, not by faith."[894]
"The law of reason reveals itself to men gradually."[895]"Eighteen hundred years ago there appeared in the midst of the pagan Roman world a remarkable new teaching, which was not comparable to any that had preceded it, and which was ascribed to a man called Christ."[896]This teaching contains "the very strictest, purest, and completest"[897]apprehension of the law of reason to which "the human mind has hitherto raised itself."[898]Christ's teaching is "reason itself";[899]it must be accepted by men because it alone gives those rules of life "without which no man ever has lived or can live, if he would live as a man,—that is, with reason."[900]Man has, "on the basis of reason, no right to refuse allegiance to it."[901]
2. Christ's teaching sets up love as the supreme law for us.
What is love? "What men who do not understand life call 'love' is only the giving to certain conditions of their personal comfort a preference over anyothers. When the man who does not understand life says that he loves his wife or child or friend, he means by this only that his wife's, child's, or friend's presence in his life heightens his personal comfort."[902]
"True love is always renunciation of one's personal comfort"[903]for a neighbor's sake. True love "is a condition of wishing well to all men, such as commonly characterizes children but is produced in grown men only by self-abnegation."[904]"What living man does not know the happy feeling, even if he has felt it only once and in most cases only in earliest childhood, of that emotion in which one wishes to love everybody, neighbors and father and mother and brothers and bad men and enemies and dog and horse and grass; one wishes only one thing, that it were well with all, that all were happy; and still more does one wish that he were himself capable of making all happy, one wishes he might give himself, give his whole life, that all might be well off and enjoy themselves. Just this, this alone, is that love in which man's life consists."[905]
True love is "an ideal of full, infinite, divine perfection."[906]"Divine perfection is the asymptote of human life, toward which it constantly strives, to which it draws nearer and nearer, but which can be attained only at infinity."[907]"True life, according to previous teachings, consists in the fulfilling of commandments, the fulfilling of the law; according to Christ's teaching it consists in the maximum approach to the divine perfection which has been exhibited, and which is felt in himself by every man."[908]
According to the teaching of Christ, love is our highest law. "The commandment of love is the expression of the inmost heart of the teaching."[909]There are "three conceptions of life, and only three: first the personal or bestial, second the social or heathenish,"[910]"third the Christian or divine."[911]The man of the bestial conception of life, "the savage, acknowledges life only in himself; the mainspring of his life is personal enjoyment. The heathenish, social man recognizes life no longer in himself alone, but in a community of persons, in the tribe, the family, the race, the State; the mainspring of his life is reputation. The man of the divine conception of life acknowledges life no longer in his person, nor yet in a community of persons, but in the prime source of eternal, never-dying life—in God; the mainspring of his life is love."[912]
That love is our supreme law according to Christ's teaching means nothing else than that it is such according to reason. As early as 1852 Tolstoi gives utterance to the thought "That love and beneficence are truth is the only truth on earth,"[913]and much later, in 1887, he calls love "man's only rational activity,"[914]that which "resolves all the contradictions of human life."[915]Love abolishes the insensate activity directed to the filling of the bottomless tub of our bestial personality,[916]does away with the foolish fight between beings that strive after their own happiness,[917]gives a meaning independent of space and time to life, which without it would flow off without meaning in the face of death.[918]
3. From the law of love Christ's teaching derives the commandment not to resist evil by force. "'Resist not evil' means 'never resist the evil man', that is, 'never do violence to another', that is, 'never commit an act that is contrary to love'."[919]
Christ expressly derived this commandment from the law of love. He gave numerous commandments, among which five in the Sermon on the Mount are notable; "these commandments do not constitute the teaching, they only form one of the numberless stages of approach to perfection";[920]they "are all negative, and only show"[921]what "at mankind's present age"[922]we "have already the full possibility of not doing, along the road by which we are striving to reach perfection."[923]The first of the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount reads "Keep the peace with all, and if the peace is broken use every effort to restore it";[924]the second says "Let the man take only one woman and the woman only one man, and let neither forsake the other under any pretext";[925]the third, "make no vows";[926]the fourth, "endure injury, return not evil for evil";[927]the fifth, "break not the peace to benefit thy people."[928]Among these commandments the fourth is the most important; it is enunciated in the fifth chapter of Matthew, verses38-9: "Ye have heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to you, Resist not evil."[929]Tolstoi tells how to him this passage "became the key of the whole."[930]"I needed only to take these words simply and downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once everything in Christ's whole teaching that had seemed confused to me, not only in the Sermon on the Mount but in the Gospels altogether, was comprehensible to me, and everything that had been contradictory agreed, and the main gist appeared no longer useless but a necessity; everything formed a whole, and the one confirmed the other past a doubt, like the pieces of a shattered column that one has rightly put together."[931]The principle of non-resistance binds together "the entire teaching into a whole; but only when it is no mere dictum but a peremptory rule, a law."[932]"It is really the key that opens everything, but only when it goes into the inmost of the lock."[933]
We must necessarily derive the commandment not to resist evil by force from the law of love. For this demands that either a sure, indisputable criterion of evil be found, or all violent resistance to evil be abandoned.[934]"Hitherto it has been the business now of the pope, now of an emperor or king, now of an assembly of elected representatives, now of the whole nation, to decide what was to be rated as an evil and combated by violent resistance. But there have always been men, both without and within the State, who have not acknowledged as binding upon themeither the decisions that were given out as divine commandments or the decisions of the men who were clothed with sanctity or the institutions that were supposed to represent the will of the people; men who regarded as good what to the powers that be appeared evil, and who, in opposition to the force of these powers, likewise made use of force. The men who were clothed with sanctity regarded as an evil what appeared good to the men and institutions that were clothed with secular authority, and the combat grew ever sharper and sharper. Thus it came to what it has come to to-day, to the complete obviousness of the fact that there is not and cannot be a generally binding external definition of evil."[935]But from this follows the necessity of accepting the solution given by Christ.[936]
According to Tolstoi, the precept of non-resistance must not be taken "as if it forbade every combat against evil."[937]It forbids only the combating of evil by force.[938]But this it forbids in the broadest sense. It refers, therefore, not only to evil practised against ourselves, but also to evil practised against our fellow-men;[939]when Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, he was defending "not himself but his beloved divine Teacher, but Christ forbade him outright and said 'All who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"[940]Nor does the precept say that only a part of men are under obligation "to submit without acontest to what is prescribed to them by certain authorities,"[941]but it forbids "everybody, therefore even those in whom power is vested, and these especially, to use force in any case against anybody."[942]
I.For love's sake, particularly on the ground of the commandment not to resist evil by force, Tolstoi rejects law; not unconditionally, indeed, but as an institution for the more highly developed peoples of our time.To be sure, he speaks only of enacted laws; but he means all law,[943]for he rejects on principle every norm based on the will of men,[944]upheld by human force,[945]especially by courts,[946]capable of deviating from the moral law,[947]of being different in different territories,[948]and of being at any time arbitrarily changed.[949]
Perhaps once upon a time law was better than its non-existence. Law is "upheld by violence";[950]on the other hand, it guards against violence of individuals to each other;[951]perhaps there was once a time when the former violence was less than the latter.[952]Now, at any rate, this time is past for us; manners have grown milder; the men of our time "acknowledge the commandments of philanthropy, of sympathy with one's neighbor, and ask only the possibility of quiet, peaceable life."[953]
Law offends against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[954]Christ declared this. The words "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7.1), "Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned" (Luke 6.37), "mean not only 'do not judge your neighbor in words,' but also 'do not condemn him by act; do not judge your neighbor according to your human laws by your courts.'"[955]Christ here speaks not merely "of every individual's personal relation to the court,"[956]but rejects "the administration of law itself."[957]"He says, 'You believe that your laws better the evil; they only make it greater; there is only one way to check evil, and this consists in returning good for evil, doing good to all without discrimination.'"[958]And "my heart and my reason"[959]say to me the same as Christ says.
But this is not the only objection to be made against law. "Authority condemns in the rigid form of law only what public opinion has in most cases long since disallowed and condemned; withal, public opinion disallows and condemns all actions that are contrary to the moral law, but the law condemns and prosecutes only the actions included within certain quite definite and very narrow limits, and thereby, in a measure, justifies all similar actions that do not come within these limits. Ever since Moses's day public opinion has regarded selfishness, sensuality, and cruelty as evils and has condemned it; it has repudiated and condemned every form of selfishness, not only the appropriation of others' property by force,fraud, or guile, but exploitation altogether; it has condemned every sort of unchastity, be it with a concubine, a slave, a divorced woman, or even with one's own wife; it has condemned all cruelty, as it finds expression in the ill-treating, starving, and killing not only of men but of animals too. But the law prosecutes only particular forms of selfishness, like theft and fraud, and only particular forms of unchastity and cruelty, like marital infidelity, murder, and mayhem; therefore, in a measure, it permits all the forms of selfishness, unchastity, and cruelty that do not come under its narrow definitions inspired by a false conception."[960]
"The Jew could easily submit to his laws, for he did not doubt that they were written by God's finger; likewise the Roman, as he thought they originated from the nymph Egeria; and man in general so long as he regarded the princes who gave him laws as God's anointed, or believed that the legislating assemblies had the wish and the capacity to make the best laws."[961]But "as early as the time when Christianity made its appearance men were beginning to comprehend that human laws were written by men; that men, whatever outward splendor may enshroud them, cannot be infallible, and that erring men do not become infallible even by getting together and calling themselves 'Senate' or something else."[962]"We know how laws are made; we have all been behind the scenes; we all know that the laws are products of selfishness, deception, partisanship, that true justice does not and cannot dwell in them."[963]Therefore"the recognition of any special laws is a sign of the crassest ignorance."[964]
II.Love requires that in place of law it itself be the law for men.From this it follows that instead of law Christ's commandments should be our rule of action.[965]But this is "the Kingdom of God on earth."[966]
"When the day and the hour of the Kingdom of God appear, depends on men themselves alone."[967]"Each must only begin to do what we must do, and cease to do what we must not do, and the near future will bring the promised Kingdom of God."[968]"If only everybody would bear witness, in the measure of his strength, to the truth that he knows, or at least not defend as truth the untruth in which he lives, then in this very year 1893 there would take place such changes toward the setting up of truth on earth as we dare not dream of for centuries to come."[969]"Only a little effort more, and the Galilean has won."[970]
The Kingdom of God is "not outside in the world, but in man's soul."[971]"The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither will men say, 'Lo here!' or, 'There!' for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17.20)."[972]The Kingdom of God is nothing else than the following of Christ's commandments, especially the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount,[973]which tell us how we must act in our present stage in order to correspond to the ideal of love as much as possible,[974]and whichcommand us to keep the peace and do everything for its restoration when it is broken, to remain true to one another as man and wife, to make no vows, to forgive injury and not return evil for evil, and, finally, not to break the peace with anybody for our people's sake.[975]
But what form will outward life take in the Kingdom of God? "The disciple of Christ will be poor; that is, he will not live in the city but in the country; he will not sit at home, but work in wood and field, see the sunshine, the earth, the sky, and the beasts; he will not worry over what he is to eat to tempt his appetite, and what he can do to help his digestion, but will be hungry three times a day; he will not roll on soft cushions and think upon deliverance from insomnia, but sleep; he will be sick, suffer, and die like all men—the poor who are sick and die seem to have an easier time of it than the rich—";[976]he "will live in free fellowship with all men";[977]"the Kingdom of God on earth is the peace of men with each other; thus it appeared to the prophets, and thus it appears to every human heart."[978]
II.Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of the State.
"Perhaps there was once a time when, in a low state of morality with a general inclination of men to mutual violence, the existence of a power limiting this violence was advantageous—that is, in which theState violence was less than that of individuals against each other. But such an advantage of State violence over its non-existence could not last; the more the individuals' inclination to violence decreased and manners grew milder, and the more the governments degenerated by having nothing to check them, the more worthless did State violence grow. In this change—in the moral evolution of the masses on the one hand and the degeneration of the governments on the other—lies the whole history of the last two thousand years."[979]"I cannot prove either the general necessity of the State or its general perniciousness,"[980]"I know only that on the one hand the State is no longer necessary for me, and that on the other hand I can no longer do the things that are necessary for the existence of the State."[981]
"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the State,"[982]annihilates all government.[983]The State offends against love, particularly against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[984]And not only this; in founding a dominion[985]the State furthermore offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[986]it is therefore to be rejected even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. "That the Christian teaching has an eye only to the redemption of the individual, and does not relate to public questions and State affairs, is a bold and unfounded assertion."[987]"To every honest, earnestman in our time it must be clear that true Christianity—the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, love—is incompatible with the State and its haughtiness, its deeds of violence, its capital punishments and wars."[988]"The State is an idol";[989]its objectionableness is independent of its form, be this "absolute monarchy, the Convention, the Consulate, the empire of a first or third Napoleon or yet of a Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or the republic."[990]—Tolstoi carries this out into detail.
1. The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch.
The State is rule. Government in the State is "an association of men who do violence to the rest."[991]
"All governments, the despotic and the liberal alike, have in our time become what Herzen has so aptly called a Jenghis Khan with telegraphs."[992]The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence not in order to overcome evil, but solely for their advantage or from caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they believe that it is practised for their good,—that is, in order to liberate them from evil,—but only because they cannot free themselves from it."[993]"If Nice is united with France, Lorraine with Germany, Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divided, if both Ireland and India are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill the Africans, expel the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in Russia, it is not because this is goodor necessary or useful for men and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in whom the power is vested."[994]
The State is the rule of the bad.[995]"'If the State power were to be annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked,' say the defenders of State rule."[996]But has the power, when it has passed from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the better men? "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robespierre, Napoleon, came to power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better rule, when the power was vested in the Versaillese or in the Communards, when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of the government? When Peter the Third was czar, and then when after his murder the authority of czar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catharine and in another by Pugatcheff, who was wicked then and who was good? All men who find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good protection against the bad."[997]But in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly be the better.[998]"In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride, craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power canarise or hold its own."[999]"It is downright ridiculous to speak of Christians in power."[1000]To this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men."[1001]"The men who have the power cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such frightful authority."[1002]"However many means men have invented to hinder the possessors of power from subordinating the welfare of the whole to their own advantage, hitherto not one of these means has worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power—be they emperors, ministers, chiefs of police, or common policemen—are, just because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than those who have no power; nor can it be otherwise."[1003]
The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch. We shall always find "that the scheming of the possessors of authority—nay, their unconscious effort—is directed toward weakening the victims of their authority as much as possible; for, the weaker the victim is, the more easily can he be held down."[1004]"To-day there is only one sphere of human activity left that has not been conquered by the authority of government: the sphere of the family, of housekeeping, private life, labor. And even this sphere, thanks to the fighting of the Communists and Socialists, the governments are already beginning to invade, so that soon, if the reformers have their way, work and rest,housing, clothing, and food, will likewise be fixed and regulated by the governments."[1005]"The most fearful band of robbers is not so horrible as a State organization. Every robber chief is at any rate limited by the fact that the men who make up his band retain at least a part of human liberty, and can refuse to commit acts which are repugnant to their consciences."[1006]But in the State there is no such limit; "no crime is so horrible that it will not be committed by the officials and the army at the will of him—Boulanger, Pugatcheff, Napoleon—who accidentally stands at the head."[1007]
2. The rule in the State is based on physical force.
Every government has for its prop the fact that there are in the State armed men who are ready to execute the government's will by physical force, a class "educated to kill those whose killing the authorities command."[1008]Such men are the police[1009]and especially the army.[1010]The army is nothing else than a collectivity of "disciplined murderers",[1011]its training is "instruction in murdering",[1012]its victories are "deeds of murder."[1013]"The army has always formed the basis of power, and does to this day. The power is always in the hands of those who command the army, and, from the Roman Cæsars to the Russian and German emperors, all possessors of power have always cared first and foremost for their armies."[1014]
In the first place, the army upholds thegovernment's rule against external assaults. It protects it against having the rule taken from it by another government.[1015]War is nothing but a contest of two or more governments for the rule over their subjects. It is "impossible to establish international peace in a rational way, by treaty or arbitration, so long as the insensate and pernicious subjection of nations to governments continues to exist."[1016]In consequence of this importance of armies "every State is compelled to increase its army to face the others, and this increase has the effect of a contagion, as Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years since."[1017]
But, if one thinks armies are kept by governments only for external defence, he forgets "that governments need armies particularly to protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects."[1018]"In the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why money was needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty officers were necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprivi merely said out loud what everybody knows, carefully as it is concealed from the peoples,—the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior regiments get their contingents from the frontiers and the frontier regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what everybody knows or at least feels,—to wit, that the existing order exists not because it must exist or because the people wills itsexistence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed petty-officers and officers and generals, keeps it up."[1019]
3. The rule in the State is based on the physical force of the ruled.
It is peculiar to government that it demands from the citizens the very force on which it is based, and that consequently in the State "all the citizens are their own oppressors."[1020]The government demands from the citizens both force and the supporting of force. Here belongs the obligation, general in Russia, to take an oath at the czar's accession to the throne, for by this oath one vows obedience to the authorities,—that is, to men who are devoted to violence; likewise the obligation to pay taxes, for the taxes are used for works of violence, and the compulsory use of passports, for by taking out a passport one acknowledges his dependence on the State's institution of violence; withal the obligation to testify in court and to take part in the court as juryman, for every court is the fulfilment of the commandment of revenge; furthermore, the obligation to police service which in Russia rests upon all the country people, for this service demands that we do violence to our brother and torment him; and above all the general obligation to military service,—that is, the obligation to be executioners and to prepare ourselves for service as executioners.[1021]The unchristianness of the State comes to light most plainly in the general obligation to military service: "every man has to take in handdeadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife,—that is, be ready for killing."[1022]
But how comes it that the citizens fulfil these demands of the government, though the government is based on this very fulfilment, and so mutually oppress each other? This is possible only by "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain."[1023]The first means is "what is best described as the hypnotization of the people."[1024]This hypnotization leads men to "the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld."[1025]The hypnotization is accomplished "by fomenting the two forms of superstition called religion and patriotism";[1026]it "begins its influence even in childhood, and continues it till death."[1027]With reference to this hypnotization one may say that State authority is based on the fraudulent misleading of public opinion.[1028]The second means consists in "bribery; that is, in taking from the laboring populace its wealth, by money taxes, and dividing this among the officials, who, for this pay, must maintain and strengthen the enslavement of the people."[1029]The officials "more or less believe in theunchangeability of the existing order, mainly because it benefits them."[1030]With reference to this bribery one may say that State authority is based on the selfishness of those to whom it guarantees profitable positions.[1031]The third means is "intimidation. It consists in setting down the present State order—of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic—as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it."[1032]Finally, the fourth means is to "separate a certain part of all the men whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon."[1033]This is done in the army, to which, at present, all young men belong by virtue of the general obligation to military service.[1034]"With this the circle of violence is made complete. Intimidation, bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money, hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."[1035]
II.Love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments take the place of the State."To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived,and the necessity of determining new forms of life."[1036]"The Christian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce the heathen forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new life on the Christian bases that it recognizes."[1037]
1. Even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. But what is to hold them together in these societies?
Not a promise, at any rate. Christ commands us to make "no vows,"[1038]to "promise men nothing."[1039]"The Christian cannot promise that he will do or not do a particular thing at a particular hour, because he cannot know what the law of love, which it is the meaning of his life to obey, will demand of him at that hour."[1040]And still less can he "give his word to fulfil somebody's will, without knowing what the substance of this will is to be";[1041]by the mere fact of such a promise he would "make it manifest that the inward divine law is no longer the sole law of his life";[1042]"one cannot serve two masters."[1043]
Men are to be held together in societies in future by the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced. "Mental influence is such a way of working upon a man that by it his wishes change and coincide with what is wanted of him; the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes."[1044]Now, the force "by which men can live in societies"[1045]is found in the mental influence which the men whohave made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced, in the "characteristic of little-thinking men, that they subordinate themselves to the directions of those who stand on a higher level of knowledge."[1046]In consequence of this characteristic "a body of men put themselves under the same rational principles, the minority consciously, because the principles agree with the demands of their reason, and the majority unconsciously, because the principles have become public opinion."[1047]"In this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory."[1048]
2. But in the future societary condition how shall the functions which the State at present performs be performed? Here people usually have three things in mind.[1049]
First, protection against the bad men in our midst.[1050]"But who are the bad men among us? If there once were such men three or four centuries ago, when people still paraded warlike arts and equipments and looked upon killing as a brilliant deed, they are gone to-day anyhow; nobody any longer carries weapons, everybody acknowledges the commands of philanthropy. But, if by the men from whom the State must protect us we mean the criminals, then we know that they are not special creatures like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like committing crimes as little as we do; we know that the activity of governments with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not correspond to the present stage of morality, their prisons, tortures,gallows, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals."[1051]If we are Christians and start from the principle that "what our life exists for is the serving of others, then no one will be foolish enough to rob men that serve him of their means of support or to kill them. Miklucho-Maclay settled among the wildest so-called 'savages', and they not only left him alive but loved him and submitted to his authority, solely because he did not fear them, asked nothing of them, and did them good."[1052]
Secondly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition we can find protection against external enemies.[1053]But we do know "that the nations of Europe profess the principles of liberty and fraternity, and therefore need no protection against each other; but, if it were a protection against the barbarians that was meant, a thousandth part of the armies that are now kept up would suffice. State authority not merely leaves in existence the danger of hostile attacks, but even itself provokes this danger."[1054]But, "if there existed a community of Christians who did evil to nobody and gave to others all the superfluous products of their labor, then no enemy, neither the German nor the Turk nor the savage, would kill or vex such men; all one could do would be to take from them what they were ready to give voluntarily without distinguishing between Russians, Germans,Turks, and savages."[1055]
Thirdly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition institutions for education, popular culture, religion, commerce, etc. are to be possible.[1056]"Perhaps there was once a time when men lived so far apart, when the means for coming together and exchanging thoughts were so undeveloped, that people could not, without a State centre, discuss and agree on any matter either of trade and economy or of culture. But to-day this separation no longer exists; the means of intercourse have developed extraordinarily; for the forming of societies, associations, corporations, for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are not needed; nay, in most cases they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends."[1057]
3. But what form will men's life together in the future societary condition take in detail? "The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it."[1058]We are not at this moment able to get perfectly clear ideas of it.[1059]
"Men say, 'What will the new orders be like, that are to take the place of the present ones? So long as we do not know what form our life will take in future, we will not go forward, we will not stir from this spot.'"[1060]"If Columbus had gone to making such observations, he would never have weighed anchor. It was insanity to steer across an ocean that no man had ever yet sailed upon toward a land whoseexistence was a question. With this insanity, he discovered the New World. It would certainly be more convenient if nations had nothing to do but move out of one ready-furnished mansion into another and a better; only, by bad luck, there is nobody there to furnish the new quarters."[1061]