The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) đź“–
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still believing in them because they are the only foundation we
have to base our life on) we do the very opposite of all that our
conscience and our common sense require of us.
We are guided in economical, political, and international
questions by the principles which were appropriate to men of three
or five thousand years ago, though they are directly opposed to
our conscience and the conditions of life in which we are placed
to-day.
It was very well for the man of ancient times to live in a society
based on the division of mankind into masters and slaves, because
he believed that such a distinction was decreed by God and must
always exist. But is such a belief possible in these days?
The man of antiquity could believe he had the right to enjoy the
good things of this world at the expense of other men, and to keep
them in misery for generations, since he believed that men came
from different origins, were base or noble in blood, children of
Ham or of Japhet. The greatest sages of the world, the teachers
of humanity, Plato and Aristotle, justified the existence of
slaves and demonstrated the lawfulness of slavery; and even three
centuries ago, the men who described an imaginary society of the
future, Utopia, could not conceive of it without slaves.
Men of ancient and medieval times believed, firmly believed, that
men are not equal, that the only true men are Persians, or Greeks,
or Romans, or Franks. But we cannot believe that now. And people
who sacrifice themselves for the principles of aristocracy and of
patriotism to-duty, don’t believe and can’t believe what they
assert.
We all know and cannot help knowing—even though we may never have
heard the idea clearly expressed, may never have read of it, and
may never have put it into words, still through unconsciously
imbibing the Christian sentiments that are in the air—with our
whole heart we know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental
truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one
Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak;
we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love
implanted by our common Father in our hearts.
Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of to-day,
whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of
philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or
superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that
all men have an equal right to life and the good things of life,
and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another,
that all are equal. Everyone knows this, beyond doubt; everyone
feels it in his whole being. Yet at the same time everyone sees
all round him the division of men into two castes—the one,
laboring, oppressed, poor, and suffering, the other idle,
oppressing, luxurious, and profligate. And everyone not only sees
this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he
takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience
condemns. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of
this contradiction and his share in it.
Whether he be master or slave, the man of to-day cannot help
constantly feeling the painful opposition between his conscience
and actual life, and the miseries resulting from it.
The toiling masses, the immense majority of mankind who are
suffering under the incessant, meaningless, and hopeless toil and
privation in which their whole life is swallowed up, still find
their keenest suffering in the glaring contrast between what is
and what ought to be, according to all the beliefs held by
themselves, and those who have brought them to that condition and
keep them in it.
They know that they are in slavery and condemned to privation and
darkness to minister to the lusts of the minority who keep them
down. They know it, and they say so plainly. And this knowledge
increases their sufferings and constitutes its bitterest sting.
The slave of antiquity knew that he was a slave by nature, but our
laborer, while he feels he is a slave, knows that he ought not to
be, and so he tastes the agony of Tantalus, forever desiring and
never gaining what might and ought to be his.
The sufferings of the working classes, springing from the
contradiction between what is and what ought to be, are increased
tenfold by the envy and hatred engendered by their consciousness
of it.
The laborer of the present day would not cease to suffer even if
his toil were much lighter than that of the slave of ancient
times, even if he gained an eight-hour working day and a wage of
three dollars a day. For he is working at the manufacture of
things which he will not enjoy, working not by his own will for
his own benefit, but through necessity, to satisfy the desires of
luxurious and idle people in general, and for the profit of a
single rich man, the owner of a factory or workshop in particular.
And he knows that all this is going on in a world in which it is a
recognized scientific principle that labor alone creates wealth,
and that to profit by the labor of others is immoral, dishonest,
and punishable by law; in a world, moreover, which professes to
believe Christ’s doctrine that we are all brothers, and that true
merit and dignity is to be found in serving one’s neighbor, not in
exploiting him. All this he knows, and he cannot but suffer
keenly from the sharp contrast between what is and what ought to
be.
“According to all principles, according to all I know, and what
everyone professes,” the workman says to himself. “I ought to be
free, equal to everyone else, and loved; and I am—a slave,
humiliated and hated.” And he too is filled with hatred and tries
to find means to escape from his position, to shake off the enemy
who is overriding him, and to oppress him in turn. People say,
“Workmen have no business to try to become capitalists, the poor
to try to put themselves in the place of the rich.” That is a
mistake. The workingmen and the poor would be wrong if they tried
to do so in a world in which slaves and masters were regarded as
different species created by God; but they are living in a world
which professes the faith of the Gospel, that all are alike sons
of God, and so brothers and equal. And however men may try to
conceal it, one of the first conditions of Christian life is love,
not in words but in deeds.
The man of the so-called educated classes lives in still more
glaring inconsistency and suffering. Every educated man, if he
believes in anything, believes in the brotherhood of all men, or
at least he has a sentiment of humanity, or else of justice, or
else he believes in science. And all the while he knows that his
whole life is framed on principles in direct opposition to it all,
to all the principles of Christianity, humanity, justice, and
science.
He knows that all the habits in which he has been brought up, and
which he could not give up without suffering, can only be
satisfied through the exhausting, often fatal, toil of oppressed
laborers, that is, through the most obvious and brutal violation
of the principles of Christianity, humanity, and justice, and even
of science (that is, economic science). He advocates the
principles of fraternity, humanity, justice, and science, and yet
he lives so that he is dependent on the oppression of the working
classes, which he denounces, and his whole life is based on the
advantages gained by their oppression. Moreover he is directing
every effort to maintaining this state of things so flatly opposed
to all his beliefs.
We are all brothers—and yet every morning a brother or a sister
must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but
every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such
things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their
health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them.
We are all brothers, yet I live by working in a bank, or
mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my
brothers. We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for
prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute
whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about,
and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed. We are all
brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from
needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle.
We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false
Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which
only serve’s to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.
I take a stipend as priest or bishop for deceiving men in the
matter of the greatest importance to them. We are all brothers,
but I will not give the poor the benefit of my educational,
medical, or literary labors except for money. We are all
brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit murder,
for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or
fortifications.
The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency.
The more delicate a man’s conscience is, the more painful this
contradiction is to him.
A man of sensitive conscience cannot but suffer if he lives such a
life. The only means by which he can escape from this suffering
is by blunting his conscience, but even if some men succeed in
dulling their conscience they cannot dull their fears.
The men of the higher dominating classes whose conscience is
naturally not sensitive or has become blunted, if they don’t
suffer through conscience, suffer from fear and hatred. They are
bound to suffer. They know all the hatred of them existing, and
inevitably existing in the working classes. They are aware that
the working classes know that they are deceived and exploited, and
that they are beginning to organize themselves to shake off
oppression and revenge themselves on their oppressors. The higher
classes see the unions, the strikes, the May Day Celebrations, and
feel the calamity that is threatening them, and their terror
passes into an instinct of self-defense and hatred. They know
that if for one instant they are worsted in the struggle with
their oppressed slaves, they will perish, because the slaves are
exasperated and their exasperation is growing more intense with
every day of oppression. The oppressors, even if they wished to
do so, could not make an end to oppression. They know that they
themselves will perish directly they even relax the harshness of
their oppression. And they do not relax it, in spite of all their
pretended care for the welfare of the working classes, for the
eight-hour day, for regulation of the labor of minors and of
women, for savings banks and pensions. All that is humbug, or
else simply anxiety to keep the slave fit to do his work. But the
slave is still a slave, and the master who cannot live without a
slave is less disposed to set him free than ever.
The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a
man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down,
not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows
that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself
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