The Kingdom of God Is Within You Leo Tolstoy (great novels of all time txt) 📖

not only will the men who support these institutions arrive at the necessity of abolishing them⁠—the men themselves who occupy these positions will simultaneously or even earlier be brought to the necessity of giving up their positions.

Public opinion more and more condemns violence, and so men, more and more submitting to public opinion, are less and less desirous of holding their positions, which are maintained by violence, and those who hold these positions are less and less able to make use of violence.

But by not using violence, and yet remaining in positions which are conditioned by violence, the men who occupy these positions become more and more useless. And this uselessness, which is more and more felt by those who maintain these positions and by those who hold them, will finally be such that there will be found no men to maintain them and none who would be willing to hold them.

Once I was present in Moscow at some discussions about faith, which, as usual, took place during Quasimodo week near a church in Okhotny Ryad. About twenty men were gathered on the sidewalk, and a serious discussion on religion was going on. At the same time there was some kind of a concert in the adjoining building of the Assembly of Noblemen, and an officer of police, noticing a crowd of people gathered near the church, sent a mounted gendarme to order them to disperse. The officer had personally no desire that they should disperse. The crowd of twenty men were in nobody’s way, but the officer had been standing there the whole morning, and he had to do something. The gendarme, a young lad, with his right arm jauntily akimbo and clattering sword, rode up to us and shouted commandingly, “Scatter! What are you doing there?” Everybody looked at the gendarme, and one of the speakers, a modest man in a long coat, said calmly and kindly: “We are talking about something important, and there is no reason why we should scatter. Young man, you had better get down and listen to what we are talking about⁠—it will do you good,” and turning away, he continued his discourse. The gendarme made no reply, wheeled his horse around, and rode off.

The same thing must happen in all matters of violence. The officer feels ennui, he has nothing to do; the poor fellow is placed in a position where he must command. He is deprived of all human life, and all he can do is to look and command, to command and look, though his commands and his watching are of no earthly use. In such a condition all those unfortunate rulers, ministers, members of parliaments, governors, generals, officers, bishops, clergymen, even rich men are now partly and soon will be completely. They can do nothing else but command, and they command and send their messengers, as the officer sends his gendarme, to be in people’s way, and since the people whom they trouble turn to them with the request that they be left alone, they imagine that they are indispensable.

But the time is coming, and will soon be here, when it shall be quite clear for all men that they are not any good and are only in the way of people, and the people whom they bother will say to them kindly and meekly, as that man in the long overcoat, “Please, do not bother us.” And all the messengers and senders will have to follow that good advice, that is, stop riding with arms akimbo among the people, bothering them, and get down from their hobbies, take off their attire, listen to what people have to say, and, joining them, take hold with them of the true human work.

The time is coming, and will inevitably come, when all the institutions of violence of our time will be destroyed in consequence of their too obvious uselessness, silliness, and even indecency.

The time must come, when with the men of our world, who hold positions that are given by violence, will happen what happened with the king in Andersen’s fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” when a small child, seeing the naked king, naively called out, “Behold, he is naked!” and all those who had seen it before, but had not expressed it, could no longer conceal it.

The point of the fable is this, that to the king, a lover of new garments, there come some tailors who promise to make him an extraordinary garment. The king hires the tailors, and they begin to sew, having informed him that the peculiarity of their garment is this, that he who is useless in his office cannot see the garments.

The courtiers come to see the work of the tailors, but they see nothing, as the tailors stick their needles into empty space. But, mindful of the condition, all the courtiers say that they see the garment, and they praise it. The king does the same. The time arrives for the procession, when the king is to appear in his new garment. The king undresses himself and puts on his new garments, that is, he remains naked, and goes naked through the city. But, mindful of the condition, no one dares to say that there are no garments, until a small child calls out, “Behold, he is naked!”

The same thing must happen with all those who from inertia hold offices which have long ago become useless, when the first man who is not interested (as the proverb has it, “One hand washes the other”), in concealing the uselessness of these institutions, will point out their uselessness and will naively call out, “But, good people, they have long ago ceased to be good for anything.”

The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, guns, dynamite, cannon, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, customhouses, palaces, is indeed terrible; but neither fortresses, nor cannon, nor guns shoot themselves at anyone, prisons do not themselves lock anyone up, the gallows does not hang anyone, the churches do not of themselves