The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) đź“–
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
- Performer: -
Book online «The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) 📖». Author Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
follow the rule of love to humanity, dismissing all thought of
love of God altogether.
The mistaken notion of scientific men that the essence of
Christianity consists in the supernatural, and that its moral
teaching is impracticable, constitutes another reason
of the failure of men of the present day to understand
Christianity.
CHAPTER V.
CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
Men Think they can Accept Christianity without Altering their
Life—Pagan Conception of Life does not Correspond with Present
Stage of Development of Humanity, and Christian Conception
Alone Can Accord with it—Christian Conception of Life not yet
Understood by Men, but the Progress of Life itself will Lead
them Inevitably to Adopt it—The Requirements of a New Theory
of Life Always Seem Incomprehensible, Mystic, and Supernatural
—So Seem the Requirements of the Christian Theory of Life to
the Majority of Men—The Absorption of the Christian Conception
of Life will Inevitably be Brought About as the Result of
Material and Spiritual Causes—The Fact of Men Knowing the
Requirements of the Higher View of Life, and yet Continuing to
Preserve Inferior Organizations of Life, Leads to
Contradictions and Sufferings which Embitter Existence and Must
Result in its Transformation—The Contradictions of our Life—
The Economic Contradiction and the Suffering Induced by it for
Rich and Poor Alike—The Political Contradiction and the
Sufferings Induced by Obedience to the Laws of the State—The
International Contradiction and the Recognition of it by
Contemporaries: Komarovsky, Ferri, Booth, Passy, Lawson,
Wilson, Bartlett, Defourney, Moneta—The Striking Character of
the Military Contradiction.
There are many reasons why Christ’s teaching is not understood.
One reason is that people suppose they have understood it when
they have decided, as the Churchmen do, that it was revealed by
supernatural means, or when they have studied, as the scientific
men do, the external forms in which it has been manifested.
Another reason is the mistaken notion that it is impracticable,
and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love for humanity.
But the principal reason, which is the source of all the other
mistaken ideas about it, is the notion that Christianity is a
doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of
life.
Men who are used to the existing order of things, who like it and
dread its being changed, try to take the doctrine as a collection
of revelations and rules which one can accept without their
modifying one’s life. While Christ’s teaching is not only a
doctrine which gives rules which a man must follow, it unfolds a
new meaning in life, and defines a whole world of human activity
quite different from all that has preceded it and appropriate to
the period on which man is entering.
The life of humanity changes and advances, like the life of the
individual, by stages, and every stage has a theory of life
appropriate to it, which is inevitably absorbed by men. Those who
do not absorb it consciously, absorb it unconsciously. It is the
same with the changes in the beliefs of peoples and of all
humanity as it is with the changes of belief of individuals. If
the father of a family continues to be guided in his conduct by
his childish conceptions of life, life becomes so difficult for
him that he involuntarily seeks another philosophy and readily
absorbs that which is appropriate to his age.
That is just what is happening now to humanity at this time of
transition through which we are passing, from the pagan conception
of life to the Christian. The socialized man of the present day
is brought by experience of life itself to the necessity of
abandoning the pagan conception of life, which is inappropriate to
the present stage of humanity, and of submitting to the obligation
of the Christian doctrines, the truths of which, however corrupt
and misinterpreted, are still known to him, and alone offer him a
solution of the contradictions surrounding him.
If the requirements of the Christian doctrine seem strange and
even alarming to the than of the social theory of life, no less
strange, incomprehensible, and alarming to the savage of ancient
times seemed the requirements of the social doctrine when it was
not fully understood and could not be foreseen in its results.
“It is unreasonable,” said the savage, “to sacrifice my peace of
mind or my life in defense of something incomprehensible,
impalpable, and conventional—family, tribe, or nation; and above
all it is unsafe to put oneself at the disposal of the power of
others.”
But the time came when the savage, on one hand, felt, though
vaguely, the value of the social conception of life, and of its
chief motor power, social censure, or social approbation—glory,
and when, on the other hand, the difficulties of his personal life
became so great that he could not continue to believe in the value
of his old theory of life. Then he accepted the social, state
theory of life and submitted to it.
That is just what the man of the social theory of life is passing
through now.
“It is unreasonable,” says the socialized man, “to sacrifice my
welfare and that of my family and my country in order to fulfill
some higher law, which requires me to renounce my most natural and
virtuous feelings of love of self, of family, of kindred, and of
country; and above all, it is unsafe to part with the security of
life afforded by the organization of government.”
But the time is coming when, on one hand, the vague consciousness
in his soul of the higher law, of love to God and his neighbor,
and, on the other hand, the suffering, resulting from the
contradictions of life, will force the man to reject the social
theory and to assimilate the new one prepared ready for him, which
solves all the contradictions and removes all his sufferings—the
Christian theory of life. And this time has now come.
We, who thousands of years ago passed through the transition, from
the personal, animal view of life to the socialized view, imagine
that that transition was an inevitable and natural one; but this
transition though which we have been passing for the last eighteen
hundred years seems arbitrary, unnatural, and alarming. But we
only fancy this because that first transition has been so fully
completed that the practice attained by it has become unconscious
and instinctive in us, while the present transition is not yet
over and we have to complete it consciously.
It took ages, thousands of years, for the social conception of
life to permeate men’s consciousness. It went through various
forms and has now passed into the region of the instinctive
through inheritance, education, and habit. And therefore it seems
natural to us. But five thousand years ago it seemed as unnatural
and alarming to men as the Christian doctrine in its true sense
seems to-day.
We think to-day that the requirements of the Christian doctrine—
of universal brotherhood, suppression of national distinctions,
abolition of private property, and the strange injunction of nonresistance to evil by force—demand what is impossible. But it
was just the same thousands of years ago, with every social or
even family duty, such as the duty of parents to support their
children, of the young to maintain the old, of fidelity in
marriage. Still more strange, and even unreasonable, seemed the
state duties of submitting to the appointed authority, and paying
taxes, and fighting in defense of the country, and so on. All
such requirements seem simple, comprehensible, and natural to us
to-day, and we see nothing mysterious or alarming in them. But
three or five thousand years ago they seemed to require what was
impossible.
The social conception of life served as the basis of religion
because at the time when it was first presented to men it seemed
to them absolutely incomprehensible, mystic, and supernatural.
Now that we have outlived that phase of the life of humanity, we
understand the rational grounds for uniting men in families,
communities, and states. But in antiquity the duties involved by
such association were presented under cover of the supernatural
and were confirmed by it.
The patriarchal religions exalted the family, the tribe, the
nation. State religions deified emperors and states. Even now
most ignorant people—like our peasants, who call the Tzar an
earthly god—obey state laws, not through any rational recognition
of their necessity, nor because they have any conception of the
meaning of state, but through a religious sentiment.
In precisely the same way the Christian doctrine is presented to
men of the social or heathen theory of life to-day, in the guise
of a supernatural religion, though there is in reality nothing
mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about it. It is simply the
theory of life which is appropriate to the present degree of
material development, the present stage of growth of humanity, and
which must therefore inevitably be accepted.
The time will come—it is already coming—when the Christian
principles of equality and fraternity, community of property, nonresistance of evil by force, will appear just as natural and
simple as the principles of family or social life seem to us now.
Humanity can no more go backward in its development than the
individual man. Men have outlived the social, family, and state
conceptions of life. Now they must go forward and assimilate the
next and higher conception of life, which is what is now taking
place. This change is brought about in two ways: consciously
through spiritual causes, and unconsciously through material
causes.
Just as the individual man very rarely changes his way of life at
the dictates of his reason alone, but generally continues to live
as before, in spite of the new interests and aims revealed to him
by his reason, and only alters his way of living when it has
become absolutely opposed to his conscience, and consequently
intolerable to him; so, too, humanity, long after it has learnt
through its religions the new interests and aims of life, toward
which it must strive, continues in the majority of its
representatives to live as before, and is only brought to accept
the new conception by finding it impossible to go on living its
old life as before.
Though the need of a change of life is preached by the religious
leaders and recognized and realized by the most intelligent men,
the majority, in spite of their reverential attitude to their
leaders, that is, their faith in their teaching, continue to be
guided by the old theory of life in their present complex
existence. As though the father of a family, knowing how he ought
to behave at his age, should yet continue through habit and
thoughtlessness to live in the same childish way as he did in
boyhood.
That is just what is happening in the transition of humanity from
one stage to another, through which we are passing now. Humanity
has outgrown its social stage and has entered upon a new period.
It recognizes the doctrine which ought to be made the basis of
life in this new period. But through inertia it continues to keep
up the old forms of life. From this inconsistency between the new
conception of life and practical life follows a whole succession
of contradictions and sufferings which embitter our life and
necessitate its alteration.
One need only compare the practice of life with the theory of it,
to be dismayed at the glaring antagonism between our conditions of
life and our conscience.
Our whole life is in flat contradiction with all we know, and with
all we regard as necessary and right. This contradiction runs
through everything, in economic life, in political life, and in
international life. As though the had forgotten what we knew and
put away for a time
Comments (0)