A Confession

stition is something very elevated, and seriously | u try to prove the superiority of our teaching to | h other doctrines by the fact that we hold this | $ superstition, while others, such as the Chinese | 0 and Hindus, do not hold it. This is argued not 0 only by theologians but also by the freethinking, j ( scholarly historians of religion (Tiele, Max j { Miiller and others), who, when classifying re- I j ligion, reckon those which share this super- | c stition as superior to those which do not share j it. The freethinking Schopenhauer plainly calls the Hebrew religion the vilest (nieder- j trachtigste) of all religions, because it contains j no idea (Jceine Idee) of the immortality of the j soul. Actually, in the Hebrew religion, \ neither that conception nor that word exists, j Eternal life, in Hebrew, is chayi-olam . Oiam , means endless, immovable in time. Olam also I means the world, the cosmos, life in general, and especially endless life. Cliayi-olam , according to the Hebrew doctrine, is an attribute of the one God. God is the God of life, the living God. Man in the Hebrew conception is always mortal ; only God is ever-living. In the Pentateuch the words ‘ live for ever 5 are twice employed, j Once in Deuteronomy, xxxii. 39, 40, God says : |

‘ See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no ; God but me : I kill, and I make alive ; I have wounded and I heal ; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, As I live for ever . . . / The other time, in Genesis iii. 22, God says : ‘ Behold, the man has eaten of the fruit of the tree I of knowledge of good and evil, and is become as | us [one of us] ; and now, may he not put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ? 3 Except in one chapter of the apocryphal book of Daniel, these are the only two instances of the use of the words ‘ live for ever 3 in the Pentateuch or in the whole of the Old Testament, and they clearly define the Jews3 conception of life generally and of life eternal. Life itself, in the conception of the Jews, is eternal, and so is life in God ; but man is mortal, such is his nature.

Nowhere in the Old Testament is it said, as taught in our Bible-classes, that God breathed into man an immortal soul , or that the first man before he sinned was immortal. God created man, as is told in the first story in the book of Genesis (ch. i. 26) just as He created the animals, of the male and female gender : and He ordered them to be fruitful and multiply |! in just the same way. Just as it is not said of the animals that they are immortal, so it is not said of man. In the following chapters it is plainly said that God drove man out of paradise and warded him off from the way to the tree of life. So that man did not eat of the fruit of the tree of life, and did not obtain chayi-olam — that is to say, ‘ life for ever 3 — but remained mortal. According to the Jewish teaching man is man just as we know him — that is to say, he is mortal. Life in him is only life continuing itself in the race from generation to generation. Only the I race, according to the teaching of the Jews, has in itself the possibility of life. When God says :

‘ You shall live and not die/ He speaks to the j a race. The life breathed by God into man is 1 a mortal for each separate man ; but this life is continued from generation to generation if men b fulfil their covenant with God — that is to say, ^ fulfil the conditions demanded for this by j li God. | t Having set forth all the laws, and said that | t these laws are not from heaven, but are in their hearts, Moses says in Deuteronomy xxx. 15 : 1 ‘ See, I have set before thee life and good, and t death and evil ; in that I command thee to love i God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his 1 commandments, that thou mayest live/ And ] in verse 19 : ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee ! life and death , the blessing and the curse : there- i fore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou, and thy seed : to love God, to obey his voice, and to cleave unto him ; for from him is thy life 1 and the length of thy days/

The chief distinction between our understand- j ing of human life and that of the Jews consists in this, that according to our understanding j our mortal life, transmitted from generation to generation, is not real life but a fallen life, for some reason temporarily spoilt ; but in the j Jewish conception this life is the most real, it is the highest good, given to man on condition that he fulfils the will of God. From our point of view, the transmission of that fallen life from generation to generation is the continuation of a curse. From the point of view of the Jews, it is the highest blessing attainable by man, and to be reached only by fulfilling God's ' will. It is on that understanding of life that Christ bases his teaching of the true or eternal life, which he contrasts with personal and mortal life. 4 Ye search the scriptures.' says Christ to ithe Jews (John v. 39), 4 because ye think that in them ye have eternal life.' A young man asked Christ (Matt. xix. 16) how to enter into eternal life. Christ, replying to the question of eternal life, says : 4 If thou wouldest enter into life (he does not say eternal life, but simply life), keep the commandments.' I He says the same to the lawyer (Luke x. 28) :

4 This do, and thou shalt live,' and here also he said live simply, without adding Hive eternally.' Christ in both cases defines what would be understood by the words 4 eternal life '; when he uses them he says to the | Jews what had often been said in their law, namely, that the fulfilment of God's will is eternal life. Christ, in contradiction to temporal, private* personal life, teaches that eternal life which, in Deuteronomy, God promised to Israel ; only [with this difference, that, according to the Jewish conception, eternal life endured only in the chosen people of Israel ; and to obtain that life it was necessary to observe the exceptional laws God had given to Israel ; while, by Christ's teaching, eternal life continues in the Son of man, and what is needed to preserve it is the observance of the laws of Christ, which express God's will for the whole of humanity. Christ contrasts with personal life, not a life is beyond the grave but common life bound up ligh with the past, present, and future, the life of tie the whole of humanity, the life of the Son of ! cob man. . tie

The salvation of personal life from death, of according to the teaching of the Jews, lay in jfcii the fulfilment of the will of God expressed in of the law of Moses by His commandments. Only | ti( on that condition did life, as the Jews under- gi stood it, not perish but pass on from generation to generation among God's chosen people. The tl salvation of personal life from death, according p to Christ's teaching, lies in a similar fulfilment a of the will of God expressed in Christ's command- 1 ments. Only on that condition, according to I Christ's teaching, does personal life not perish i but become ever secure in the Son of man. The difference is only in this, that Moses' service of God is a service of the God of one people, while Christ's service of God is a service of the God of all mankind. The survival of life in the generations of one race was doubtful, for that people itself might disappear, and also because that survival depended on corporeal descendants. The survival of life by Christ's teaching is indubitable, because life, according to his teaching, is transferred to the Son of man, who lives by the will of the Father.

But, even supposing the words of Christ about ! a day of judgement, the end of the age, and other sayings in John's Gospel have a meaning referring to a life beyond the grave for the souls of those who have died, nevertheless it is unquestionable that his teaching about the light of life and the kingdom of God also has the meaning, comprehensible to his hearers and ; comprehensible to us, that the only true life is the life of the Son of man according to the will of the Father. It is easier to admit this, since ; the doctrine of true life according to the will of the Father of life can include the conception of immortality and of life beyond the grave. It may be more correct to suppose that, after this worldly life lived for the fulfilment of his personal will, an everlasting personal life still awaits a man in paradise with all possible delights : perhaps that is more correct ; but to think that it is so, and to try to believe that for I good deeds I shall be rewarded with everlasting bliss, and for bad deeds with everlasting torments, does not conduce to an understanding fe of Christ’s teaching. On the contrary, to think so deprives Christ’s teaching of its chief basis.

The whole teaching of Christ is that his I disciples, having understood the illusory nature of personal life, should renounce it and transfer it into the life of the whole of humanity ; the life of the Son of man. The teaching of the immortality of the personal soul, on the other hand, does not call for the renunciation of one’s personal life, but rivets that personality for ever. According to the conception of the Jews, the Chinese, the Hindus, and all the people of the world who do not believe the dogma of the fall of man and his redemption, life is life as we know it. A man copulates, has children, brings them up, grows old, and dies. His children grow up and continue his life, which goes on uninterruptedly from generation to generation, just as all goes on in the world : stones, earth, metals, plants, animals, stars, and everything in the universe. Life is life, and must be used as well as possible. To live for oneself is irrational. Therefore, since people existed, they have sought an aim of life outside themselves ; and live for their child, their family, their tribe, or for humanity, for all that does not die with their personal life.

According to the teaching of our Church, on the contrary, human life, as the greatest good known to us, is represented as being only an atom of the life that is, for a time, held back from us. Our life, according to our view, is not life as God wished to give and should have given it us, but is a spoilt, bad, fallen life, a copy of life, a caricature of the real life we for some reason imagine that God should have given us. The chief aim of our life, according to this view, is not to live this mortal life as the Giver of life desires, nor to make it permanent in the generations of men, as the Jews teach, nor in merging it with the will of the Father, as Christ taught ; but in convincing oneself that after this life true life will begin. Christ does not speak of this imaginary life of ours which God ought to have given, but for some reason did not give, to man. The theory of the fall of Adam and everlasting life in para- dise and an immortal soul breathed into Adam by God, was unknown to Christ, and he did not refer to it, nor by a single word hint at its existence. Christ speaks of life as it is and will always be. But we speak of a life we have imagined for ourselves — such I as never ■ existed ; how, then, can we understand Christ's teaching ?

Christ could not imagine among his disciples such a strange conception. He assumes that every one understands that personal life inevitably perishes, and he shows a life that does not perish. He gives welfare to those who are in evil plight ; but to those who have persuaded themselves that they have much more than Christ gives his teaching can offer nothing. I may exhort a man to work, assuring him that I for his labour he will receive food and clothing, but suddenly the man becomes convinced that he is a millionaire ; evidently he will not listen to my exhortations. The same thing occurs with Christ's teaching. Why should I try to earn, when I can be rich without work ? Why should I try to live this life according to the will of God, when I am confident that, without that, I shall have an everlasting personal life? We are taught that Christ saved people by the fact that he was the Second Person of the Trinity, that he was God and became incarnate, and, having taken on himself the sins of Adam i and of all mankind, he redeemed the sins of men before the First Person of the Trinity, and for our salvation established the Church

and the sacraments. By believing this we are saved and receive everlasting personal life beyond the grave. But it cannot be denied that he saved and saves people also by the fact that, having shown them the inevitable destruction awaiting them, he, by his words, ‘ I am the way , the truth , and the life ,’ showed them a t true path of life in place of the false path of personal life we previously followed. There may be people who have doubts about life beyond the grave and salvation based on the redemption, but about the salvation of men, individually and collectively, by showing them the inevitability of the destruction of their personal life, and by merging their will with that of the Father, there can be no doubt. Let any rational man ask himself what his life and death is. Can he give to that life and death any other meaning than that wdiich Christ gave ? Any meaning given to a personal life, if it be not based on the renunciation of self for the service of man, humanity, the Son of man, is a delusion which flies to pieces at the first contact with reason. That my personal life perishes and that the life of the whole world in the will of the Father does not perish, and that only | by merging with it can I possibly be saved, of that I can have no doubt. But this is so little in comparison with those exalted religious beliefs in a future life ! Though it be little, it is sure.

We are lost in a snow-storm. A man assures us, and he believes, that there are lights and there is a village ; but it only seems so to him and to us because we wish it were so. We have walked towards those lights, and there were none. Another man has walked through the snow ; he has reached the road and shouts to | us : ‘You will get nowhere, the lights are in your eyes ; you will go astray and perish. But here is the hard road ; I am on it ; it will keep us right.’ That is very little. When we believed in the lights that glittered in our bewildered eyes, we seemed close to a village and a warm hut, and to safety and rest, and here we have only a firm road. But if we listen to the first man we shall certainly perish, and if we listen to the second we shall certainly reach our destination. And so what should I do if I alone have understood Christ’s teaching and believed in it — alone among people who do not understand it and do not fulfil it ? What am I to do ? Live like every one else, or live according to Christ’s teaching ? I have understood Christ’s teaching in his commandments, and I see that their fulfilment offers

(blessedness to me and to all men. I have understood that the execution of these commandments is the will of that Source of all, from which my life also has come. I have understood that whatever I may do I shall inevitably perish in a meaningless life and death, with all who surround me, if I do not fulfil the will of the Father, and that in its 1 fulfilment lies the only possibility of salvation. Doing as all do, I shall certainly counteract the welfare of all, I shall certainly act contrary to the will of the Father of life, I shall certainly deprive myself of the only possibility of bettering my desperate position. Doing what Christ teaches me, I continue what has been done by people who preceded me : I co-operate in the welfare of all men now living as well as of those who will come after me ; I do what is desired of me by Him who brought me into existence, and I do what alone can save me. The circus at Berdichev is on fire : all push and suffocate one another, pressing against the door, which opens inwards. A saviour appears and says : 4 Stand back from the door, turn back ; the more you push the less chance you have of being saved. Turn back, and you will find an exit, and will be saved.’ Whether many people, or I alone, hear this and believe it — in any case, having heard and believed, what can I do but stand back and call on all to listen to the saviour ? They may smother, crush, and kill me ; but, all the same, there is no salvation for me except by going the only way that makes an exit possible. And I cannot but go that way. A saviour should really be a saviour — that is to say, should really save. Christ’s salvation is really salvation. He came, spoke, and humanity is saved.

The circus has been burning an hour, and one must make haste, and the people may not be in time to escape. But the world has been burning for 1,800 years, since the day when Christ said, 4 1 have come to bring fire upon earth ; and how am I straitened till it is kindled 9 — and that fire will burn till people save themselves. Is not that why men exist, and is not that why the fire burns, in order that people may have the joy of being saved ? And, having understood this, I understood and believed that Jesus is not only the Messiah, the Christ, but that he is really the Saviour of the world. I know that there is no other exit either for me or for all those who, together with me, are tormented in this life. I know that for all, and for me, together with them, there is no way of escape except by fulfilling those commands of Christ which offer to all humanity the highest welfare of which I can conceive. I am not frightened about whether I shall have more unpleasantness or whether I shall die sooner. This may be terrible to one who does not see how senseless and ruinous is his separate, personal life, and who thinks he will * not die. But I know that my life, aiming at personal, solitary happiness, is the greatest

[absurdity, and that at the end of this stupid life there is inevitably nothing but a stupid death. Therefore things cannot be at all I terrible for me. I shall die like every one else, like those who do not fulfil the teaching ; but, both for me and for all, my life and death will have a meaning. My life and death will serve j the salvation and life of all, and that is what Christ taught.

Were all people to fulfil Christ’s teaching (1; the kingdom of God would have come on earth ; L if I alone fulfil it, I do the best that is possible for myself and for all men. Without the ful- T filment of the teaching of Christ there is no j salvation. 4 But how is one to get the faith to Q fulfil it, always to follow it, and never to be unfaithful to it ? ’ 4 Lord, I believe ; help Thou The disciples asked Christ to confirm their j faith ; 4 I wish to do good, but I do evil,’ says the Apostle Paul. 4 It is hard to be saved,’ men in general say and think. A man is sinking and asks to be saved; a rope is thrown him which alone can save him, and the drowning man says : 4 Confirm my faith that the rope will save me. I believe,’ 4 says he, 4 that the rope will save me, but help my unbelief.’ What does this mean ? If the man does not seize the thing that can save him, it only means I that he does not understand his position.

How could a Christian, believing in the divinity of Christ and all his teachings (however * he understand them), say that he wishes to j believe, but cannot ? God himself, coming to earth, said : You have before you everlasting (torment, fire, everlasting infernal darkness — and here is your salvation — in my teaching and in its fulfilment. It is impossible for such a Christian not to believe in the offered salvation, not to fulfil it, and to say, £ Help thou my unbelief/ In order that man might say that, he must disbelieve in his own destruction, and must believe that he will not perish. Children jump from a ship into the water. They are still upheld by the current, by their 1 clothes which are not yet soaked, and by their own feeble movements, and they do not understand their peril. From above, from the departing ship, a rope is thrown to them ; they are told that they will certainly perish, and are begged by those on the ship to save themselves (the parables of the woman who found a piece of silver, of the shepherd who found a lost sheep, of the supper, and of the prodigal son, speak only of this). Rut the children do not believe ; they disbelieve, not in the rope, but in the fact that they are perishing ; other frivolous children, like themselves, have assured them that they will always, even after the ship has gone, continue merrily bathing. They do not believe that their clothes will soon be soaked, that their little arms will be tired, that they will begin to gasp, will be choked, and will g© to the bottom ; they do not believe in all this, and solely for that reason do not believe in the rope which would save them.

As the children who have fallen from the ship believe that they will not perish, and therefore I do not catch at the rope, so people who believe in the immortality of the soul have convinced themselves that they are not perishing, and therefore they do not obey the teaching of Christ-God. They do not believe that which it is impossible to disbelieve, and this simply11 because they believe in that which it is impossible to believe. And so they call to some one : 4 Confirm in us the belief that we are not perishing.’ But this it is impossible to do ; in order that they should have faith that they will not perish they must cease to do the things that destroy them and must begin to do the things that save them — they must catch at the rope which would save them ; and they do not wish to do this, but to assure themselves that they are not perishing, despite the fact that one after another their comrades perish before their eyes. And this desire of theirs, to believe in that which is not true, they call faith. It is natural that they always have little faith, and want to have more.

Only when I understood the teaching of Christ did I understand also that what these people call faith is not faith, and that this false faith is what the Apostle James rejected in his Epistle. (That Epistle was long not acknowledged by the Church, and when it was accepted it underwent certain perversions, some words were thrown out, and some transposed or arbitrarily translated. I follow the accepted . h t 1 f translation, merely correcting the inaccuracies, in accordance with Tischendorfs text.1) James ii. 14-22, 24, 26 : ‘ What doth it profit, my brethren,5 says James, ‘ if a man say he hath faith, and have not works ? can that faith save him ? If a brother or sister be naked, and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled ; and yet ye give them not the things needful to the body ; what doth it profit ? Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works : shew me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will shew thee my faith. Thou beiievest that God is one ; thou doest well : the devils also believe, and shudder. But wilt thou know, 0 vain man, that faith apart from works is barren ? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, Jin that he had offered up Isaac his son upon fthe altar ? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. . . . Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead/

J ames says that the only signs of faith are ; the works which flow from it, and that therefore faith from which works do not flow is a matter of mere words, which, as they will not feed any one, will also not justify any one or save him, and therefore faith from which works do J 1 The English Revised Version accords with Tolstoy’s translation, and has been followed here. not flow is not faith, but only the desire to believe something : only a mistaken assertion in words that I believe what I do not believe. Faith, according to this definition, is that which promotes deeds, and deeds are what faith produces — that is to say, that which makes faith really faith. The Jews said to Christ (John vi. 30), 4 What then doest thou for a sign,' j that we may see, and believe thee ? What ! workest thou ? * That is what was said to him when he was on the cross (Mark xv. 32): 4 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe/ (Matt. i xxvii.42) : 4 He saved others ; himself he cannot save. He is the King of Israel ; let him now j come down from the cross, and we will believe on him/ And to this demand to increase their faith, Christ replies that their wish is vain, and that nothing can compel them to J believe that which they do not believe. (Luke xxii. 67) He said, 4 If I tell you, ye will not believe/ (John x. 25-6) 4 1 told you, and ye believe not. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep/

The Jews demanded what is demanded by Church Christians, some external sign which i; would compel them to believe in the teaching j of Christ, and he replies and explains to them why it is impossible. He says that they cannot believe because they are not of his sheep — that is to say, do not follow that path of life which he has shown to his sheep. He explained < ( J ohn v. 44) wherein lies the difference between j his sheep and others, explaining what some believe and others do not believe, and on what faith rests. c How can ye believe,” says he, * which receive teaching 1 one of another, and the teaching that cometh from the only God ye seek not ? , To believe, says Christ, you must seek that teaching which flows from the only God. He who speaks from himself seeks his own teaching (8o£av rrjv ISiav), but he who seeks the teaching of him who sent me is true, and there is no untruth in him (John vii. 18). The teaching of life is the basis of faith. Actions all flow from faith, faith comes from doxa, that meaning which we attribute to life. There may be innumerable actions ; there are also very many faiths ; but there are only two doxa, doctrines of life. One of these is denied and the other affirmed by Christ. One teaching, that which is denied by Christ, is that personal life is something really existing and belonging to men. This is the doctrine which was held, and is held, by the majority of men, and from which flow all the various faiths held by worldly men and all their actions. The other doctrine is that which was preached by all the prophets and by Christ : it is that our personal life gains meaning only by the fulfilment of the will of God.

If a man has for his doxa that the most important thing is his personality, he will 1 86%cl, as in many other passages, is here quite wrongly translated by the word 6 glory ’ ; do^a, from Sokcm, means opinion, judgement, teaching. — L. T. consider that his personal welfare is the most important and desirable thing in life, and according to the direction in which he seeks that welfare — whether in obtaining property, or distinction, or fame, or in the satisfaction of his desires — he will have a faith corresponding to that outlook, and all his actions will accord with it. If his doxa is different, if he understands life in such a way that its meaning lies only in the fulfilment of the will of God, as it was understood by Abraham, and as Christ taught, then, according to his perception of the will of God will be his corresponding view of faith, and all his actions will conform therewith. That is why those who believe that our life is satisfactory cannot believe in the teaching of Christ, and all their efforts to believe it always remain vain. In order to believe, they would have to alter their outlook on life ; and until they alter that, their actions will always conform to their belief, and not to what they wish to believe and say they believe.

The desire to believe in the teaching of Christ, in those who asked a sign of him, and in our believers, does not correspond and cannot correspond with their life, however they may try to make it. They may pray to Christ-God, and receive, Communion, and do deeds of charity, and build churches, and convert others ; all this they do, but they cannot do Christ's deeds, because such deeds flow from faith based on quite another teaching {doxa) than that which they hold. They cannot offer up in sacrifice their only son, as was done by Abraham, > whereas Abraham could not have hesitated about presenting, or not presenting, his son in sacrifice to God, that God which alone gave meaning and blessedness to his life. And in just the same way Christ and his disciples could not but give up their lives for others, for in that alone lay the meaning and welfare of their life. From this misunderstanding of the essence of faith flows that strange desire people have to believe that it would be better to live according to the teaching of Christ, while with all the strength of their souls, in accordance with their faith in personal life, they seek to live contrary to that teaching.

The basis of faith is the meaning of life, from which flows the valuation of what is important and good and what is unimportant and bad in life. The valuation of all the phenomena of life depends on one's faith. And as now people, having faith based on their own teaching, cannot in any way make it accord with the faith which flows from the teaching of Christ, so was it also impossible for his disciples to do so. And this misunderstanding is frequently and clearly expressed in the Gospels. Christ's disciples often asked him to confirm their faith in what he told them (Matt. xix. 23-8 and xx. 20-8 ; Mark x. 35-45). According to both the Evangelists, after the sayings — terrible to every believer in personal life and to every one who sees welfare in worldly riches— after the words that the rich will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and the words still more terrible for those who believe only in personal life — - that whosoever does not leave all, and life itself, for the sake of Christ's teaching, will not be saved — Peter asks, £ What shall we have who have left all and followed thee ? 9 Afterwards, according to Mark, James and John, they themselves, but, according to Matthew, their mother, asked him to grant that they' should sit on each side of him when he will be in his glory. They ask him to confirm their faith by promising a reward. To Peter's question Jesus replied with the parable of the labourers hired at different hours (Matt, xx. 1-16). To James's question he answered: You know not yourself what you ask — that is to say, you ask impossibilities, you do not understand the teaching. The teaching lies in the renunciation of personal life, and you are asking for personal fame, personal reward. You can drink the same cup (live the same life) as I, but to sit on my right and left hand, that is, to be equal with me, is what no one can do. And here Christ says : Only in worldly life do the powerful enjoy and delight in the fame and power of personal life ; but you, my disciples, should know that the meaning of human life does not lie in personal happiness, but in serving all, in humiliation before all. Man lives not to be served, but himself to serve and give up his personal life as a ransom for all. Christ, in reply to his disciples' demand, which showed him how completely they failed to understand his teaching, did not tell them to believe — that is to say, to change that valuation

of the good and evil in life which flowed from ; their teaching (he knew that this was impossible) but explained to them the meaning of life on which his faith rested — that is to say, the true valuation of what is good and evil, important and unimportant. To Peter’s question (Matt. xix. 27) ‘What shall we have, what reward for our sacrifices ? 9 Christ replies with the parable of the labourers hired at different times and receiving identical payment. Christ explains to Peter his misunderstanding of the teaching, from which his absence of faith results. Christ says : Only in personal and meaningless life is it precious and important that the remuneration for work should accord with the amount of work done. The belief in a remuneration for work according to the amount of work flows from the doctrine of personal life. That belief rests on the assumption that we have a claim to something ; but man has no rights and can have none. He is ever in debt for the welfare given him, and therefore can make no demands on any one. Even if he gives up his whole life, he still cannot repay what has been given him, and therefore his master cannot be unjust to him. If a man asserts rights to his life and keeps account with the Source of all things which has given him life, he thereby only shows that he does not understand the meaning of life.

People who had received happiness demanded something more. These people stood in the market-places idle and unhappy, lacking life. The master took them, and gave them the greatest blessing of life — work. They accepted i the kindness of the master, and then remained j dissatisfied. They were dissatisfied because j they had no clear consciousness of their position ; they had come to work holding a false doctrine to the effect that they had rights to their lifer and to their labour, and that therefore their labour should be rewarded. They did not understand that this labour was the highest blessing, which is freely given to them, and for which they should only try to return a similar blessing, but could not demand reward. And therefore people, having, like these workmen, a perverted understanding of life, cannot have a just and true faith. The parable of the master and the workman ! who returned from the field, spoken in reply to the disciples' direct request that he would confirm their faith, defines yet more clearly . the foundations of the faith Christ teaches. (Luke xvii. 3-10) Horrified at the difficulty of fulfilling the rule Christ lays down, that one must forgive one's brother not seven times, but unto seventy times seven, the disciples say : Yes, but ... in order to fulfil this, one must have faith ; confirm, increase, our faith. As previously they had asked : ‘ What shall we get for it ? ' so now they ask what all so-called Christians ask to-day : I want to believe, but cannot ; confirm our belief that the rope of salvation will save us. They say : Do something to make us believe, just as the Jews had asked of him a sign. By miracles,

or by promising rewards, make us believe in our salvation. The disciples said, as we say : It would be well to arrange so that we, living the personal, self-willed life we do, could also believe that, if we were to fulfil God’s teaching, things would be still better for us. We all make that demand, J which is one contrary to the whole sense of Christ’s teaching, and we are surprised that we are quite unable to believe. And to this most fundamental misunderstanding, which existed then as it exists now, he replies with a parable in which he shows what true faith is. Faith cannot result from credulous acceptance of what is said ; faith comes only from recognizing one’s position. Faith rests only on reasonable consciousness of what it is best to do, being in the position in which we are. He shows that it is impossible to arouse this faith in others by promising a reward or by threats of punishment, and that this could result only in a weak credulity which would crumble at the first temptation ; that the faith which moves mountains—that which nothing can disturb — rests on a consciousness of inevitable impending : destruction, and of the only possible means of safety in this position.

To have faith, no promises of reward are necessary. It is only necessary to understand that E salvation from inevitable destruction lies in living a common life according to the Master’s will. Whoever understands that will not seek for confirmation, but will save himself without any exhortations. To the disciples’ request for a confirmation of ! their faith Christ says : When a workman re- I turns from the field, his master does not at > once tell him to have dinner, but tells him to ; stall the cattle and serve him, and only then h will the workman sit down to table and have dinner. The workman does ail this without „ I considering himself ill-used, and does not jfc boast or demand gratitude or reward, but knows that so it should be, and that he is but doing what is needful ; that this is a necessary condition both of the service and of the true welfare j of his life. So also you, says Christ, when you j have done all that is demanded of you, must consider that you have only done your duty. He who understands his relation to the Master will understand that only by submitting to his Master’s will can he have life ; and he will know wherein his welfare lies, and will have a faith to which nothing will be impossible. This j is the faith Christ teaches. Faith, according to Christ’s teaching, rests on a reasonable consciousness of the meaning of one’s life.

The foundation of faith, according to Christ’s ! teaching, is light. (John i. 9-12) ‘ That was the true light, ' which lighteth every man coming into the ; world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew j him not. He came unto his own, and his j own received him not. But as many as re- i ceived him, even to them that believe on his name, gave he the right to become the children j of God/ (iii. 19-21) ‘And this is the judgement,1 that the light is come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the light : for their works were evil. For every one that doeth ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they have been wrought in God.’ For him who has understood the teaching of Christ there cannot be any question of confirming his faith. Faith, according to Christ’s teaching, rests on light, on truth. Christ nowhere demands faith in himself : he demands faith in the truth.

(John viii. 40.) He says to the Jews : £ Ya seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God.’ (46) 4 Which of you convicteth me of sin ? If I say truth, why do ye not believe me ? ’ (xviii. 37) He says, ‘ To this end was I born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.’ (xiv. 6) He says, ‘ I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ (16) ‘ The Father,’ says he to the disciples, 4 shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever.’ (17) ‘ That Comforter is the Spirit of truth, whom the world neither sees nor knows, but whom ye know, for he is with you and shall be in you.’ He says that his whole teaching, and that he himself, is truth. 1 The judgement (Kpiais) does not mean the judgement, but the division. — L. T. The teaching of Christ is the teaching of truth. And therefore faith in Christ is not credulously accepting something concerning Jesus, but is knowledge of the truth. The teaching of Christ is not a thing any one can be induced to believe in, nor is it possible to bribe any one to fulfil it. He who understands the teaching of Christ will also have faith in it, because that teaching is the truth. And he who knows the truth necessary for his welfare cannot but believe it, as a man who has understood that he is really sinking cannot but catch at the rope of salvation. And the question : What must I do to believe ? is a question which merely displays a non-comprehension of Jesus Christ’s teaching.

We say, ‘ It is difficult to live in agreement with the teaching of Christ ! ’ And how can it but be difficult when we ourselves laboriously, by the arrangement of our whole life, hide our position from ourselves and laboriously confirm ourselves in a credulous belief that our position is not at all what it is, but is quite different ? And, having called this credulity faith, we make of it something sacred, and by every means — by working on their feelings, by threats, flattery, and deception — we allure men to this false credulity. In this demand for credulous belief in the impossible and unnatural we have reached such a pass that the very irrationality of that for which we demand credulous belief is considered a sign of its validity. A man, ‘ a Christian,’ was found who said, Credo quia ahsurdum,1 and other Christians repeated this with enthusiasm, assuming that absurdity is the very best method of teaching 1 The actual words used by Tertullian were, Credo quia impossibile. One might amend the above passage to make it read : ‘ Others have repeated this, assuming that the assertion of impossibilities is the best method of inculcating truth.’

people the truth. Recently I had a conversation with a learned and clever man who told * me that Christian teaching, as a moral teaching f of life, is unimportant. ‘All that/ said he to | me, ‘ could be found among the Stoics and the Brahmins and in the Talmud. The essence ' of the Christian teaching is not in that, but in u the theosophic teaching expressed in its dogmas/ In other words, that is not precious in Christian I teaching which is eternal and common to all mankind, necessary for life and reasonable, but that is important and precious which is quite unintelligible and therefore unnecessary, and for the sake of which millions of people have [ been slaughtered. We have formed for ourselves a false perception of our life and of the life of the world, based on nothing but our own enmities and personal desires ; and belief in this false perception, which is artificially connected with Christ’s teaching, we consider to be what is most necessary and important for life. Were it not for this credulous belief in falsehood, which has been maintained among men for centuries, the falsity of our conception of life, and the truth of Christ’s teaching, would long ago have become plain.

It is terrible to say, but it sometimes appears to me that if Christ’s teaching, with the Church teaching which has grown out of it, had not existed at all, those who now call themselves Christians would have been nearer to the truth of Christ — that is to say, to a reasonable teaching of what is good in life — than they now are. The moral teaching of the prophets of all humanity would have not been closed to them ; they would have had their own small preachers of truth, and would have believed in them. But now the whole truth is open to them, and that whole truth has seemed so terrible to those whose deeds were evil, that they have reinterpreted it into falsehood, and people have lost their belief in what is true. In our European civilized society, in reply to Christ’s statement that he came into the world to witness to the truth, and that therefore every one who is of the truth hears him — people have long ago answered in the words of Pilate, 4 What is truth ? ’ Those words, which express the profound and sad irony of a single Roman, we have accepted seriously and have adopted as our belief. All in our world live, not merely without the truth, not merely without a desire to know it, but with a firm conviction that, of all useless occupations, the most useless is the search for truth defining human life.

The teaching of life — which among ail nations, before the age of European society, was always considered the most important thing, that about which Christ said that it was the one thing needful — this one thing is excluded from our life and from the whole activity of humanity. With this matter the institution which calls itself the Church is occupied : an institution in which all, including even those who compose it, have long ceased to believe. The solitary i window towards the light, to which are directed the eyes of all who think or who suffer, has been boarded up. In reply to the question, £ What am I ? ’ and 4 What am I to do ? Can I not aid | my life by the teaching of that God who, you 9 say, came to save me ? 5 I am told, 4 Obey the demands of the powers that be, and believe in j the Church.’ 4 But why is it so hard for me to ; live in this world ? ’ asks a despairing voice ; i 4 Why is there all this evil ? Is it not possible ^ for me in my own life to abstain from participate p ing in this evil ? Can it be that it is impossible to lessen this evil ? ’ They reply : 4 It is impossible. Your wish to live your life well and j to help others to do the same is pride and a j; snare. The one thing you can do is to save ; yourself ; that is, to save your soul for a future ? life. If you do not wish to participate in the evil of the world, retire from it ; that path is open to every one,’ says the teaching of the ! Church. 4 But know that, on choosing that path, you must not take part in the life of the j world, but cease to live and must slowly kill j yourself.’ There are two paths, say our j teachers : (1) to believe and to obey us, and the powers that be, and participate in the evil we have organized, or (2) to retire from the world and go into a monastery, not sleeping and not eating, rotting your flesh on the top of a column,1 bending and unbending, and doing nothing of any use to men. Either admit the teaching of Christ to be impracticable, and therefore ac- | quiesce in the lawlessness of life the Church has j

1 Like St. Simeon Stylites and the other Stylites, who are more highly honoured in the Eastern than in L the Western world. c MY YOKE IS EASY ' 297 sanctified, or renounce life — which is equivalent * to slow suicide. Astonishing, to any one who understands Christ's teaching, as is the delusion which admits Christ's teaching to he very good for men, but impracticable, still more amazing is that delusion which acknowledges that a 1 man who wishes to carry out the teaching of Christ not in words only, but in deeds, ought to retire from the world. The delusion that it is better for men to withdraw from the world is an old delusion, familiar long ago to the Jews, but quite foreign to the spirit, not only of Christianity, but even to that of Judaism. Against that fallacy, long before the time of Christ, was written the story of the prophet Jonah, of which Christ was so fond, and which he so often quoted. The thought of that story from beginning to end is identical. Jonah, the prophet, wishes personally, by himself alone, to be a just man, and he withdraws from among depraved people, but God shows him that he is a prophet and that therefore it is necessary that he should impart his knowledge to the people who are in error, and so he should not flee from the erring people, but should live in contact with them. Jonah despises the depraved Ninevites and flees from them ; but, however much he runs away from his destiny, God brings him back to the Ninevites by means of the whale, and that is accomplished which God desires, namely, the Ninevites receive God's teaching from Jonah, and their life becomes better. But Jonah, far from being

glad that he is the instrument of God's will, is discontented, and is jealous of God's favour p to the Ninevites, and would like to be reasonable * and good alone by himself. He withdraws into the desert, weeps over his fate, and re- i proaches God : then a gourd grows up in one night over him and shields him from the sun, and in another night a worm eats the gourd, and Jonah reproaches God still more desperately because the gourd he valued has been lost. Then God says to him, ‘ You regret the gourd you call yours, which grew up in one night ; but do I not regret the great people which was perishing, living like beasts unable to distinguish their right hand from their left ? Your knowledge of the truth was only of value if it was communicated to those who had it not.' Christ knew the story and frequently quoted it, and we are also told in the Gospels how Christ himself, after visiting John the Baptist, who had withdrawn into the desert, underwent that same temptation before commencing his own preaching, and how he was led away by the devil (by a deception) into the desert to be tempted, and how he conquered that deception and in the strength of his spirit returned into Galilee, and how from that time ©n, without avoiding any depraved people, he spent his life among publicans, Pharisees, and sinners, teaching them the truth (Luke iv. I).1

1 Christ was led into the wilderness in order there to be tempted (Matt. iv. 3-7). The deception told Christ that he was not a Son of God if he could not turn stones into bread. Christ replied : ‘ I can ! According to Church teaching, Christ, the God-Man, gave us an example of life. The whole of the life of Christ known to us was led in the very whirlpool of life among publicans and adulterers in Jerusalem, and with the Pharisees. The chief injunctions of Christ were love of one's neighbour and the preaching of the truth to others ; the one and the other demand continual intercourse with the world. Suddenly out of this is deduced the conclusion that, according to the teaching of Christ, one should withdraw from everything, have nothing to do with any one, and stand on a column. In order to follow the example of Christ, it appears that one must do exactly the opposite of what he taught, and of what he did. The teaching of Christ, according to Church commentators, is presented both for worldly people and also for the Religious Orders, not as a teaching of life — how to make it better for

live without bread ; I live by that which was breathed into me by God.’ Then the deception said : ‘ If you live by that which was breathed into you by God, throw yourself down from this high place ; you will kill your flesh, but the spirit breathed into you by God will not perish.’ Christ replied : ‘ It is the will of God that I should live in the flesh ; to kill my flesh means to act contrary to the will of God — to tempt God* (Matt. iv. 8-11). Then the deception said: 4 If that is so, then serve your flesh as all men do, and your flesh will reward you.’ Christ replied : ‘ I am not the owner of my flesh. My life is in the spirit ; but I cannot destroy my flesh, because my spirit is in my flesh by the will of God, and therefore only by living in the flesh can I serve my Father, God.’ And Christ departed from the wilderness into the world. ourselves and for others — but as a teaching of what the worldly people should believe, in f order, by living badly, to save themselves in the next world ; and, for the Religious Orders, how to make this life still worse for themselves than it is.

But that is not what Christ taught. Christ taught truth, and, if abstract truth f is truth, it will also be true in practice; and if life in God is the only true life blessed in itself, then it is true and blessed here on earth amid all the possible accidents of life. If life here did not confirm the teaching of j Christ about life, that teaching would be r untrue. Christ does not call us to something worse instead of something better, but, on the contrary, to something better instead of something worse. He pities people who appeared to him like lost sheep, perishing without a shepherd, and he promises them a shepherd and good pasture. He says that his disciples will be persecuted for his teaching and will have to suffer and to ; endure worldly persecution with fortitude, but he does not say that by following his teaching they will suffer more than by following the world's teaching ; on the contrary, he says that those who follow the teaching of the world will j be unhappy, and those who follow his teaching will be blessed. Christ does not teach salvation by faith or by asceticism — that is, by a deception of the imagination or by voluntarily tormenting oneself in this life ; but he teaches life in which, |

besides salvation from the loss of personal - life, there will, here in this world, be less of suffering and more of joy than by a personal life. Christ, revealing his teaching, says to people that, by following it, even among those who do not follow it, they will not be more unhappy S than before, but, on the contrary, will be happier than those who reject it. He says that there is true worldly advantage in not taking thought for the worldly life. 4 And Peter began to say unto him : Behold we have left all and followed thee ; what shall we receive ? * Jesus answered him and said, 4 Verily, I say unto you, there is not one who has left home, or brother, or sister, or father, or mother, or wife, or child, or lands, for my sake and the Gospel’s, who will not receive now, in this time, amid persecutions, a hundred times more houses, and brethren, and sisters, and fathers, and mothers, and children, and lands, and in the age to come, life eternal/ (Matt. xix. 27, 29 ; Mark x. 28-30 ; Luke xviii. 28-30.) Christ, it is true, says that those who follow him will be persecuted by those who do not listen to him, but he does not say that the disciples will lose anything thereby ; on the contrary, he says that his disciples will here, in this world, have more of joy than those who do not follow him.

That Christ says and thinks this is shown beyond possibility of doubt by the clearness of his words and the drift of his whole teaching, as well as by his way of life and that of his disciples. But is it true ? Examining the abstract question whether the position of the disciples of Christ or of the disciples of the world is the better, one cannot -but see that the position of the disciples of Christ should be better, because they, doing good to all men, would not evoke hatred. The disciples of Christ, doing harm to no one, would only be persecuted by evil men, but the disciples of the world would be persecuted by all, since the law of their life is the law of strife — that is to say, the persecution one of another. The chances of suffering are the same for these as for those, with only this difference, that Christ's disciples will be prepared for the sufferings, but the world's disciples will employ all the powers of their souls to escape them ; and that Christ's disciples, when suffering, will think that the world needs their sufferings ; but the world's disciples, when suffering, will not know why they suffer. Arguing in the abstract, the position of Christ's followers should be better than that of those of the world. But is it so in reality ?

To verify this let every one remember all the painful moments of his life, all the physical and spiritual sufferings he has endured and still endures, and ask himself for what has he borne all these misfortunes, for the sake of the world's teaching, or for that of Christ's ? Let every sincere man remember well his whole life, and he will see that never, not once, has he suffered from obeying the teaching of Christ, but that most of the misfortunes of his f life have come about because, contrary to his own inclination, he has followed the world's teaching which constrained him. In my own life, exceptionally fortunate in a worldly sense, I can recall sufferings borne by me in the name of the world's teaching, which 1 would be sufficient to supply a good Christian martyr. All the bitterest moments of my life, from the drunkenness and debauchery of student-days, the duels, war, and so on, to that ill-health and those unnatural and trying conditions of life in which I now live — all this was martyrdom in the name of the world's teaching. And I speak of my own life, which is exceptionally fortunate in a worldly sense. But how many martyrs are there who have endured, and are now enduring, for the sake of the world's teaching, sufferings which I cannot even vividly imagine to myself !

We do not see all the difficulty and danger of obeying the world's teaching’ merely because we consider that all we endure for it is unavoidable. We have assured ourselves that all these misfortunes which we inflict on ourselves are necessary conditions of cur life, and therefore we are unable to grasp the fact that Christ teaches just how we should free ourselves from these misfortunes, and live happily. To be in a condition to discuss the question which life is happier, we should, if only in thought, dismiss that false notion, and look without prejudice within ourselves and around us. Go among a large crowd of people, especially townsfolk, and notice the wearied, distressed, sickly faces, and then remember your own life and the lives of people about whom you have known ; remember all the violent deaths, all the suicides of which you have heard, and ask yourself for whose sake was all this suffering, death, and suicidal despair ? And you will see, strange as it at first seems, that ninetenths of these sufferings are endured for the sake of the world's teaching ; that all these sufferings are unnecessary, and need not exist ; and that the majority of people are martyrs to the world's teaching.

Recently, one rainy autumn Sunday, I went by tram through the Bazaar at the Sukharev Tower. For nearly half a mile the car made its way through a dense crowd of people, who immediately closed in again behind it. From morning to night these thousands of people, of whom most were hungry and ragged, swarm here in the dirt, scolding, cheating, and hating one another. The same thing occurs in all the bazaars of Moscow. The evening is passed by these people in the dram-shops and taverns, the night in their corners 1 and hovels. Sunday is the best day in their week. On Mom 1 It was common for Moscow workmen to live in a corner of a room or passage, generally not even screened off from the rest of the room in which other people, besides the owner and his family, had other ! corners. day, in their infected dens, they will again resume * the work they detest. Consider the life of all these people in the positions they left to choose that in which they have placed themselves, and remember the unceasing toil these people voluntarily endure — men and women — and you will see that they are

Ail these people have left their home, field, fathers, brothers, and often their wives and children, and have abandoned everything, even their very lives, and have come to town to acquire that which, according to the teaching of the world, is considered indispensable for each of them. And they all — not to mention those tens of thousands of unfortunate people who have lost everything and struggle along on garbage and vodka in the doss-houses — they all, from the factory hands, cabmen, seamstresses, and prostitutes, to the rich merchants and Ministers of State, with their wives, endure the most trying and unnatural manner of life, and yet fail to acquire what, according to the teach* ing of the world, they need. Search among these people for a man, poor or rich, for whom what he earns secures what he considers necessary according to the world’s teaching, and you will not find one in a thousand. Every one struggles with his whole strength to obtain what he does not need, but what is demanded of him by the teaching of the world, and the absence of which therefore makes him unhappy. And as soon as he obtains what is required, something else, and again something

else, is demanded of him, and so this work of Sisyphus continues endlessly, ruining the life of men. Take the ladder of wealth of people who spend from £30 to £5,000 a year, and you will rarely find one who is not tormented and worn out with work to obtain £40 when he has £30, and £50 when he has £40, and so on endlessly. And there is not one who, having £50, would voluntarily exchange into the way of life of one having £40, or, if there are such cases, the exchange is made not to live more easily, but to save money and hide it away. They all have more and more to burden their already overladen life with work, and to devote their life and soul entirely to the service of the world’s teaching. To-day I obtain a coat and goloshes, to-morrow a watch and chain, after to-morrow a lodging with a sofa and a lamp, then carpets in the sitting-room and velvet clothes, then racehorses and pictures in gilt frames, then finally, I fall ill from my excessive labours and die. Another continues the same labour and also sacrifices his life to that same Moloch ; he too dies, and also does not know why he did what he did. But perhaps the life itself during which a man does all this is happy ?

Test that life by the measure of what all men have always described as happiness, and you will see that this life is terribly unhappy. Indeed, what are the chief conditions of earthly happiness — those which no one disputes ? One of the first conditions acknowledged by everyone is that man’s union with nature should not be infringed — that is to say, that he should live under the open sky, in the light of the sun and in the fresh air, in contact with the earth, with vegetation, and with animals. All men have always considered that to be deprived of those things was a great misfortune. Men confined in prison feel this deprivation more than anything else. But consider the life of people who live according to the teaching of the world : the more they achieve success according to the world’s teaching, the more are they deprived of this condition of happiness. The higher they climb in the scale of worldly fortune the less do they see of the light of the sun, of the fields and the woods, and of wild or domestic animals. Many of them, almost all the women, live on to old age seeing the rising of the sun only once or twice in their lives, and never seeing the fields and the woods except from a carriage or a railway train, and not only without having sown or planted anything, or fed or reared cows, horses, or hens, but without even having an idea of how those animals are bom, grow, and live. These people only see textiles, stone, and wood shaped by human toil, and that not by the light of the sun, but by artificial light. They only hear the sounds of machines, vehicles, cannons, and musical instruments ; they smell scents and tobacco-smoke ; under their feet and hands they have only textiles, stone, and wood ; for the most part, on account of their weak digestions, they eat food that smells and is not fresh. Their movements from place to place do not save them from these

deprivations. They move about in closed boxes. In the country and abroad, wherever they go, they have the same textiles and wood under their feet, the same curtains hiding the light of the sun from them, the same footmen, coachmen, and porters depriving them of contact with the earth, with plants, and with animals. Wherever they may be they are deprived, like prisoners, of this condition of happiness. As prisoners console themselves with a tuft of grass that grows in the prison yard, with a spider or a mouse, so these people sometimes console themselves with puny indoor plants, a parrot, or a monkey, and even these they do not themselves rear. Another undoubted condition of happiness is work ; in the first place voluntary work which one is fond of, and, secondly, physical work which gives one an appetite and sound, restful sleep. Again, the more good fortune people have secured according to the world’s teaching, the more are they deprived of this second condition of happiness. All the fortunate ones of the world, the men in important places, and the rich, either live like prisoners, quite deprived of work and vainly struggling with diseases that arise from the absence of physical labour, and still more vainly with the ennui which overcomes them (I say vainly, because work is only joyous when it is undoubtedly needful — and they need nothing), or they do work they hate, as bankers, public prosecutors, governors, or ministers, while their wives arrange drawingrooms, china, and costumes for themselves and

their children. (I say hateful because I have ' never yet met one of them who praised his occupation, or did it with even as much pleasure as that with which a porter clears away the snow from before the house.) All these fortunate people are either deprived of work or are burdened with work they dislike — that is to say, they find themselves in the position in which prisoners are placed. The third indubitable condition of happiness is a family. And again, the further people have advanced in worldly success the less is that happiness accessible to them. Most of them are adulterers, and consciously renounce the happiness of a family, submitting only to its inconveniences. If they are not adulterers, still their children are not a joy to them, but a burden, and they deprive themselves of them, trying in every way — often by most tormenting means— to make their marital unions barren. Or, if they have children, they are deprived of the joy of intercourse with them. They, by their rules, have to hand them over to strangers, for the most part quite alien people ; first to foreigners,1 and then to the Government instructors 2 ; so that their family only causes them grief, their children from infancy becoming as unhappy as their parents, and having only one feeling towards their parents — a desire

1 This is a reference to the common Russian practice of having a foreign nurse, governess, or tutor for young children, that they may learn a foreign language in the nursery. 2 The Russian schools are State institutions. for their death in order to inherit their property.1 They are not shut up in prison, but the consequences of their life, in regard to their family, are more tormenting than the deprivation of family life to which prisoners are exposed. The fourth condition of happiness is free, amicable intercourse with all the different people in the world. And again, the higher the rank attained by men of the world the more are they deprived of this chief condition of happiness : the higher, the narrower, and the more restricted is the group of people with whom it is possible for them to associate, and the lower in mental and moral development are the few people who form the enchanted circle from which there is no escape. For a peasant and his wife intercourse is open with the whole world of mankind, and if one million people do not wish to have intercourse with him he still has eighty millions of people such as himself, labouring people, with whom, from Archangel to Astrakhan,

1 The defence of such a life which one often hears from parents is amazing. ‘ I want nothing,’ say the parents; ‘ this kind of life is hard for me, but, as I love my children, I bear it for their sakes.’ That is to say, I know by undoubted experience that our life is unhappy, and therefore ... I educate my children so that they should be as unhappy as I am. And therefore, out of my love for them, I place them in the full physical and moral contagion of a town ; I hand them over to strangers who have only a mercenary aim in educating them ; and so physically, morally, and mentally I take pains to injure my children, And this contention has to serve as justification for the irrational life the parents themselves lead 1 — L. T. without waiting for visits or introductions, he can at once enter into the closest brotherly relations. For an official with his wife there are hundreds of people on the same level as himself ; but those above him do not receive him, and those below him are all separated from him. For a rich man of the world and his wife a few dozen worldly families are accessible; all the rest are cut off from him. For a Minister of State, or a millionaire, and his family, there are a single dozen similarly important or wealthy people. For Emperors and Kings the circle is yet more restricted. Is not this a form of imprisonment, in which the prisoner can only have intercourse with two or three warders ?

Finally, a fifth condition of happiness is a healthy and painless death. And again, the higher people stand on the social ladder the more are they deprived of this condition of happiness. Take, for example, a moderately rich man and his wife and an average peasant and his wife, notwithstanding all the hunger and excessive toil which, not by his fault but by the cruelty of man, a peasant has to bear, and you will see that the lower the healthier, and the higher the sicklier are men and women. Count over in your memory the rich men and their wives you have known or now know, and you will notice that most of them are ill. Among them a healthy man, who is not undergoing treatment continually or periodically summer after summer, is as much an exception as is a sick man among the peasantry. All these fortunate people, without exception, begin with onanism (which has become in their class a natural condition of development), they all have bad teeth, are all grey or bald at an age when a workman is just reaching his full strength. They are nearly all subject to nervous, digestive, and sexual illnesses from gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery, and doctoring, and those who do not die young spend half their life in being doctored and taking injections of morphia, or are shrivelled cripples, unfitted to live by their own exertions and capable of existing only like parasites or like those ants who are fed by slave-ants. Consider their deaths : this one shot himself ; that one rotted with syphilis ; another old man died from the effects of a stimulant, while another died young from a flogging to which he submitted in his desire for sex-stimulation ; one was eaten alive by lice, another by worms ; one drank himself to death, another died of over-eating ; one from morphia, and another from producing an abortion. They perish one after another for the sake of the world’s teaching. And the crowd throngs after them and seeks, like martyrs, for suffering and destruction.

One life after another is flung under the chariot-wheels of that god : the chariot passes on tearing them to pieces, and fresh and fresh victims, with groans, cries, and curses, fall beneath it ! To fulfil the teaching of Christ is hard ! Christ says : ‘ Let him that would follow me hoi 1 < lift leave house, and fields, and brothers, and follow me, God, and he shall receive in this world a hundred times more houses, fields, and brothers, and besides that shall gain eternal life/ And no one follows him. But the teaching of the world says : 4 Abandon house, and fields, and brothers, and go from the village to the rotten town. Live all your life as a naked bath-attendant, soaping other people's backs amid the steam, or serve in a money-changer's basement-office, all your life counting other people's pence ; or live as a public prosecutor, spending your whole life in the courts, over law-papers, and devoting yourself to making miserable people's fate yet worse; or as a Minister of State, signing unnecessary papers in a hurry all your life ; or as a colonel, killing people all your life — - live such a monstrous life as this, always ending in a painful death, and you will neither get anything in this world nor will you receive life eternal.' And every one follows this course. Christ said : 4 Take up your cross

and follow me ' — that is to say, endure submissively the fate that has befallen you and obey me, God ; and no one follows him. But the first abandoned man wearing epaulets, and fit for nothing but murder, into whose head it enters, says: 4 Take, not a cross, but a knapsack I and rifle, and follow me to all kinds of torment and to certain death' — and all follow him. Having abandoned their families, parents, wives, and children, and having been dressed up like fools and submitted themselves to the authority of the first man of higher rant that they happened to meet : cold, hungry J and exhausted by forced marches, they gc like a herd of bullocks to the slaughter ; yet they are not bullocks, but human beings. Thej cannot but know that they are being driven j to slaughter with the question unanswered—! Why ? And with despair in their hearts they are go, and die of cold, hunger, and infectious] diseases, till they are placed under a shower of bullets and cannon-balls and ordered to kill people who are unknown to them. They slay and are slain. And no one of the slayers knows why or wherefore. The Turks roast

them alive on the fire, skin them, and tear out their entrails. And to-morrow some one will again whistle, and again all will follow to horrible sufferings, to death, and to obvious evil. And no one considers this hard ! Neither those who endure the sufferings, nor their fathers and mothers, consider this difficult. The parents even themselves advise their children to go. It seems to them that not only is this necessary and unavoidable, but that it is also good and moral. It would be possible to believe that the fulfilment of Christ's teaching is difficult and terrible and tormenting, if the fulfilment of the world's teaching were easy, safe, and pleasant. But, in fact, the fulfilment of the world's teaching is much more dangerous and tormenting than the fulfilment of Christ's teaching. There used, it is said, to be Christian martyrs, but they were the exception ; they have been reckoned at 380,000 — voluntary and involuntary, in 1,800 years. But count the worldly martyrs, and for each Christian martyr you will find a thousand worldly martyrs whose sufferings are a hundred times more terrible. Those slain in war, during the present century, are reckoned at SCbOOCbOOO.1 Now these were all martyrs to the world's teaching, who needed not even to follow the teaching of Christ but simply to abstain from following the teaching of the world, in order to have escaped from suffering and death.

A man need only do what he wishes to do — refuse to go to war, — he will be set to dig trenches : but will not be tormented in Sevastopol or Plevna. A man need but disbelieve the world's teaching that he must wear overshoes 2 and a watch-chain and have a drawingroom he does not need, and that he must do all the stupid things demanded of him by the world's teaching, and he will not be exposed to excessive toil and suffering, never-ending cares, and work without rest or aim ; he will not be deprived of intercourse with nature, will not be deprived of congenial work, of family, and of health, and will not perish by a senseless and tormenting death. 1 This book was written in 1884 ; and the figures relate to the nineteenth century. 2 The wearing of over shoes or goloshes to keep one’s feet dry and warm, and to be able, on entering a house, to kick them off and have clean feet, is here instanced as a sign of distinction from the peasant, who usually wears nothing over his high boots. It is not necessary to be a martyr in Christ'i name — that is not what he teaches. He onl} bids us cease to torment ourselves in the name i! of the world's false teaching.

Christ's teaching has a profound metaphysical meaning, it has an all-human meaning, and it has the simplest, clearest, and most practical) meaning for the life of every single man.! That last meaning can be expressed thus Christ teaches men not to commit stupidities. Therein lies the simplest meaning of Christ's teaching, accessible to all. Christ says : Do not be angry, do not consider any one your inferior — to do so is stupid. If you get angry and insult people it will be the worse for you. Christ also says : Do not run after women, but unite with one woman and live with her — it will be better for you so. He also says : Do not promise anything to any one or else they will oblige you to do stupid and evil actions. He also says : Do not return evil for evil, or the evil will return to you yet more bitterly than before : like the heavy log suspended over the store of honey, which kills the bear.1 2 He also says : Do not consider 1 We have here one of Tolstoy’s sweeping conclu- ; tl sions, and one which caused a great deal of trouble g( in the Tolstoy movement and among those who | t arranged Tolstoy Colonies. These all fell to pieces largely for lack of definite understanding as to what : ( each man might expect of his fellow-colonists.

2 The reference is to the practice of hanging a r heavy block, or log, over a deposit of honey. When i i a bear tries to take the honey he knocks himself j 1 against the log, which swings back and hits him. $ men foreign to you merely because they live in another country and speak another language. If you consider them as enemies, and they consider you such, it will be worse for you. So do not commit all these stupidities, and it will be better for you. 4 Yes/ people reply, 4 but the world is so arranged that to resist its arrangements is more painful than to live in accord with them. If a man refuses military service he will be sent to a fortress, and perhaps shot. If a man does not safeguard his life by acquiring the property he and his family need, he and they will die of hunger/ So people say, trying to defend the world's arrangement, but they do not think so themselves. They only speak so because they cannot deny the justice of the teaching of Christ, in whom they are supposed to believe, and they must justify themselves in some way for not fulfilling that teaching. They not only do not think this, but they have never even thought about the matter at all. They believe the world's teaching and merely employ the excuse the Church has taught them, to the effect that if one fulfils Christ's teaching one must endure great suffering ; and therefore they have never even tried to fulfil it. We see the innumerable sufferings people endure for the sake of the world's teaching, but in our time we never see sufferings for the sake of

The^bear then strikes the log more fiercely, and it, rebounding, strikes him still more heavily, and so on, until,, it is said, the bear is sometimes killed by the blows he receives. Christ's teaching at all. Thirty millions have perished for the world's teaching in warfare thousands of millions have pined in a tormenting! to life for the sake of the world's teaching, while not only no millions, but not even thousands or dozens, or even one single man, do I know who has perished by death or by a painful life of hunger and cold for the sake of Christ's teaching. It is only a ridiculous excuse, showing to what a degree Christ's teaching is unknown to us. Not only do we not share it ; we have never even seriously considered it. The Church has been at pains to explain Christ's teaching so that it has appeared to us not as a teaching of life, but as a bugbear. Christ calls men to a spring of water which is there beside them. Men are tormented by thirst, eat dirt, and drink one another's blood, but their teachers tell them that they will perish if they go to the spring to which Christ directs them. And people believe this ; they suffer and die of thirst at two steps from the water, not daring to go to it. But it is only necessary to believe Christ, that he has brought blessing on earth, and that he gives us who thirst a spring of living water, and to come to him, to see how insidious is the Church's deception, and how insensate are our sufferings when salvation is so near at hand. It is only necessary to accept Christ's teaching, simply and plainly, for the terrible deception in which we all and each are living to become clear.

Generation after generation we labour to secure life by means of violence and by safeguarding our property. Our happiness seems to us to lie in obtaining the maximum of power and the maximum of property. We are so accustomed to this that Christ's teaching that a man's happiness cannot depend on his power or his estate, and that a rich man cannot be happy, seems to us like a demand to make a sacrifice for the sake of future bliss. But Christ did not think of calling us to sacrifice ; on the contrary, he teaches us not to do what is worse, but to do what is better for us, here in this life. Christ, loving men, teaches them to refrain from securing themselves by violence and by property, just as others who love men teach them to refrain from brawling and drunkenness. He says that men, if they live without resisting others and without property, will be happier ; and by the example of his own life he confirms this. He says that a man living in accord with his teaching must be prepared to die at any moment by the violence of others, by cold or hunger, and cannot be sure of a single hour's life. And we imagine this to be a terrible demand of sacrifice ; but it is only a declaration of the conditions in which 3very man always and inevitably lives. Christ's disciple must be prepared at any moment for suffering and death. But is not a disciple of the world in the same position % We are so accustomed to our pretence that all we do for :he imaginary security of our life — our armies, ‘ortifications, stores, clothes, and doctoring, )ur property and our money — seems to us

real, and as something that seriously secures! our life. We forget, though it is obvious tot every one, what happened to the man who planned to build barns in order to be safe for! many years. He died that same night. Indeed! all we do to safeguard our life is just what anj ostrich does, standing still and hiding its! head in order not to see how it is being killed. We do worse than the ostrich : doubtfully to safeguard our doubtful life in a doubtful future, we certainly destroy our certain life in the certain present. The deception consists in the false conviction that our life can be secured by strife against j others. We are so accustomed to this deception — an imaginary safeguarding of our life and property- — that we do not notice all we lose by it. And we lose all — our whole life. Our whole life is absorbed in cares for this safeguarding of life, this preparation for life, so that no life at all is left us. We need but for a moment discard our habits and regard our life from outside, to see that all • we do for the supposed safeguarding of our life we really do not at all to safeguard our life, but only, by busying ourselves with these things, I to forget that life is never secured. But not only do we deceive ourselves and spoil our real life for the sake of an imaginary one ; we generally in this effort to make ourselves safe, ruin the very thing we wish to secure. The French armed themselves to secure their life in 1870,

and in consequence of this safeguarding hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen perished. The same is done by all nations that arm themselves. The rich man secures his life by having money, and that very money attracts a robber who kills him. A nervous man safeguards his life by undergoing a cure, and the cure itself slowly kills him, or, if it does not kill him, certainly deprives him of life, like that sick man who did not live for thirty-eight years, but waited for the angel at the pool (John v. 2-8). Christ’s teaching that life cannot be made safe, but that one must always, at each moment, be ready to die, is certainly better than the world’s teaching that one must secure one’s life : it is better because the inevitability of death and the insecurity of life remain the same whether one adopts the world’s teaching or that of Christ; but life itself, by Christ’s teaching, is not all absorbed without any remainder, in the useless occupation of pseudo-safeguarding one’s life, but becomes free and can be devoted to its one natural aim, the welfare of one’s self and one’s fellows. A disciple of Christ will be poor. Yes ; that is to say, he will always make use of all those blessings which God has given him. He will not ruin his life. We have called poverty,1 which is a happiness, by a word that indicates misfortune, but the reality of the matter is not altered thereby. To be poor means that a man 2

1 Poverty, in Russian, is bednost, from the same root as beda , a misfortune. 2 Tolstoy has in mind a Russian country peasant, whom he contrasts with a rich townsman, and the description relates to things as they were under the Tsars in the pre-Revolutionary days. will not live in a town but in a village, and will not I sit at home but will work in the woods or fields ; | will see the light of the sun, the earth, the sky, j and animals ; will not consider what he can eat 1 1 n to arouse his appetite, and how to get his bowels to move, but will be hungry three times a day ; ll to will not toss about on soft cushions, wondering jj st how he is to escape from sleeplessness, but will sleep ; he will have children and will live with them ; will have free intercourse with all men, ; c and above all will not do things he does not wish to do, and will not be afraid of what will happen I d to him. He will sicken, suffer, and die as every n one does (though, to judge by the way poor men sicken and die, it will be better for him than it is for the rich) ; but he will certainly live i more happily. To be poor, to be indigent and a vagrant (th-o^os means vagrant) is what Christ taught ; that without which it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God, without which it is impossible to be happy here on earth.

4 But no one will feed you, and you will die of hunger,' is said in reply to this. To the ob- j jection that a man living according to Christ’s teaching will die of hunger Christ replied by one brief sentence (the one which is interpreted as a justification for the idleness of the clergy, Matt, i x. 10 ; Luke x. 7). He said : 4 Take no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff : for the labourer is wnrthy of his food.5 4 In that same ! house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the labourer is worthy of his hire.5 The labourer is worthy,1 literally means : can and should have his subsistence. It is a very short saying ; but for any one who understands it as Christ did, it admits of no further argument to the effect that a man who has no property will die of hunger. To understand these words in their real meaning one must first of all quite renounce the supposition (which has become so common among us as a consequence of the dogma of the redemption) that man’s welfare consists in idleness. One must return to the conception natural to all unperverted people, that the necessary condition of happiness for man is not idleness, but work ; that a man cannot reject work ; that not to work is dull, wearisome, and hard, as it is dull and hard for an ant, a horse, or any other animal not to work. One must forget our savage superstition that the position of a man with an inexhaustible purse — that is to say, with a Government post, the ownership of land, or of bonds bearing interest, which make it possible for him to do nothing — is a naturally happy condition. One must restore in one’s imagination that view of work which all unperverted 1 In both the Geneva and Christchurch editions of the Russian the word ££ecm is here inserted. It does not occur in either of the Gospel texts referred to, and it perplexes the present translator, who omits it as meaningless. If anyone can furnish a clue to its presence, such assistance will be much appreciated. Possibly, as the work could not be printed in Russia, the proofs may have been passed with inadequate revision. Tolstoy’s MS. was often untidy and rather illegible, and an error may have crept in which cannot now be traced to its source.

people have, and which Christ had when he said that the labourer was worthy of his subsistence. Christ could not imagine people who would regard work as a curse, and therefore could not imagine a man who did not work, or did not wish to work. He always supposes that his disciples work. And therefore he says : ‘ If a man works, then his work will feed him.’ If another man takes the produce of this man’s labour, then the other man will feed the worker, just because he reaps the advantage of his labour. And so the worker will receive his subsistence. He will not have property, but there can be no doubt about his subsistence. The difference between Christ’s teaching and the teaching of our world about work lies in this, that, according to the world’s teaching, work is man’s peculiar merit for which he keeps account with others, and considers that he has a right to the more subsistence the more he works ; while, according to Christ’s teaching, work is a necessary condition of man’s life, and subsistence is the inevitable consequence of work. Work produces food, food produces work, that is the unending circle : the one is the consequence and the cause of the other. However evil a master may be, he will feed his workman as he will feed the horse that works for him ; and will feed him so that the workman may produce as much as possible ; in other words, can co-operate in that which provides the welfare of man.

‘ The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ According to the teaching of Christ each individual man, independently of what the world may be like, will have the best kind of life if he understands that his vocation is not to demand work from others, but to devote his own life to working for others, and to give his life a ransom for many. A man who acts so, says Christ, is worthy of his subsistence — that is to say, cannot but receive it. In a word, man does not live that others should work for him, but that he should work for others. Christ sets up the basis which undoubtedly ensures man’s material existence, and by the words, 4 The labourer is worthy of his subsistence,’ he sets aside that very common objection to the possibility of fulfilling his teaching which says that a man carrying out Christ’s teaching among people who do not carry it out will perish of hunger and cold. Christ shows us that a man ensures his subsistence, not by taking it from others, but by doing what is useful and necessary for others. The more necessary he is to others the more safe will be his existence.

Under the existing arrangements of the world people who do not fulfil Christ’s law, but who work for their neighbours and have no property, do not die of hunger. How, then, can one make it an objection to Christ’s teaching that those who obey it — that is to say, those who work for their neighbours — will die of hunger ? A man cannot die of hunger while the rich have bread. In Russia, at any given moment, there are always millions of people living without any property, simply by their labour. Among the heathen a Christian will be provided for as among Christians. He works for others, consequently they need him, and therefore he will be fed. Even a dog that is wanted is fed and cared for ; how then should a man not be fed and cared for, who is of use to every one ? But a sick man, one with a family and children, is not wanted and cannot work — so people will cease to feed him, say those who are bent on making out a case for a bestial life. They will and do say this, and do not notice that they themselves, who say so and would like to act so, cannot do it, but behave quite otherwise. Those very people who do not acknowledge the practicability of Christ’s teaching, follow it ! They do not cease to feed a sheep, a bull, or a dog which falls ill. They do not even kill an old horse, but give it such work as it can do ; they feed their family, as well as lambs, little pigs, and puppies, expecting them to be of use. So how should they not feed a useful man when he is ill, and how should they fail to find work within their strength for the old and the young, or cease to rear those who will one day work for them ?

They not only will do this, but they are doing this very thing. Nine-tenths of the people — the common labourers — are fed like working cattle by the one-tenth who are not common people, but are rich and powerful. And, however gross the delusion in which that one-tenth lives, how- ever much they may despise the other ninetenths, this one-tenth of powerful people never deprives the nine-tenths of necessary subsistence, though they have the power to do so. In order that they may have offspring who should labour for them, they do not deprive the common people of what is necessary for them. Latterly this one-tenth have consciously endeavoured to arrange for the nine-tenths to be properly fed, that as large an output of work may be got from them as possible, and that fresh workmen may be produced and reared. Even the ants breed and rear their own milch-cows, so how should men not do as much, and breed those who will work for them ? Workers are needed. And those who make use of their work will always be much concerned to see that the workers do not die out. The objection to the practicability of Christ's teaching which says that if I do not acquire for myself, and do not retain what I have acquired, no one will feed my family, is correct, but only in relation to idle, useless, and therefore harmful, people such as the majority of our wealthy class. No one except stupid parents will bring up idle people ; because idle people are of no use to any one, not even to themselves ; but even the worst men will feed and rear workers. Calves are reared, and man, as a working animal, is more valuable than a bull, as the prices in the slave-markets have always proved. That is why children will never be left without care.

Man does not live that others should serve him , but that he should himself serve others. He who labours will be fed. That is a truth confirmed by the life of the whole world. Till the present time, always and everywhere, where man has worked he has obtained sustenance, as every horse receives his feed. And such sustenance was received by the workers involuntarily, against the grain, for they only desired to free themselves from toil, to get as much as possible, and to seat themselves on the neck of those who were sitting on their necks. Such an involuntary, unwilling worker, envious and angry, was not left without sustenance, and was even more fortunate than the man who did not work, but lived on the labour of others. How much more fortunate still will he be who works according to Christ's law, and whose aim is to work as much as he can and to take as little as possible ! And how much more happy will his position be when around him there will be at least some, and perhaps even many, men like himself, who will serve him ! Christ's teaching of work and its fruits is expressed in the story of the feeding of the five and the seven thousand with two loaves and five fishes. Humanity will reach the highest happiness possible for it on earth when people do not try to swallow and consume everything themselves, but when they do as Christ taught them by the sea-shore.

Some thousands of people had to be fed. A disciple told Christ that he had seen a lad who had some fishes, the disciple also had some loaves. Jesus understood that some of the people, coming from a distance, would have brought food, but that others would not. (That some had supplies with them is shown by the fact that in all four Gospels it is mentioned that when the meal was ended remnants were collected in twelve baskets. If no one but the lad had brought anything, there would not have been those twelve baskets in the field.) If Christ had not done what he did, namely, performed the miracle of feeding the thousands of people with five loaves, what happens in our world would have happened there. Those who had supplies would have eaten what they had. They would have eaten it all, and even over-eaten themselves, so as not to leave anything over. The mean ones, perhaps, would have carried home their surplus. Those who had nothing would have remained hungry, watching the eaters with angry envy, and perhaps some of them would have snatched from those who saved, and there would have been quarrels and fights, and some would have gone home satiated, others hungry and angry. It would have been as it is in our life.

But Christ knew what he wanted to do (as is said in the Gospels). He bade them all sit round, and he told his disciples to offer to others what they themselves had, and to bid others do the same. And then it appeared that, when all who had supplies had done like Christ's disciples — that is to say, had offered what they had to others — all ate moderately, and, after going round the circle, there was food enough left for those who had at first not eaten. And all were satisfied, and much food remained over ; so much that they gathered up twelve baskets full. Christ taught men that they should deliberately behave in this way in life, because such is the law of man and of all humanity. Work is a necessary condition of man's life. Work also gives welfare to man. And therefore the withholding from others of the fruits of one's labour, or of other people's labour, hinders the welfare of man. Giving one's labour to others promotes man's happiness. ‘ If people do not take away property from one another they will die of hunger,' we say. It would seem that we should rather say the contrary : if people take by force from one another there will be some who will die of hunger — and this actually occurs.

Really every man, however he lives, whether according to Christ's teaching or to the world's • — is alive only thanks to the work of other people. Others have protected him, and given him drink and fed him, and still protect him and feed him, and give him drink. But by the world's teaching man, by violence and threats, obliges others to continue to feed him and his family. By Christ's teaching equally man is protected, nourished, and supplied with drink by others ; but in order that others should continue to guard, to feed, and to give him drink, he does not bring force to bear on any one, but tries himself to serve others and to be useful tk Mi c ei Jt to all men as he can, and thereby he becomes necessary to all. Worldly people will always wish to cease to feed one who is unnecessary to them and who compels them by force to feed him, and at the first opportunity they not only cease to feed him, but kill him as unnecessary. But all men, always, evil as they may be, will carefully feed and safeguard one who works for them. In which way, then, is it safer, more reasonable, and more joyous to live : according to the world's teaching or according to Christ's ?

The teaching of Christ establishes the kingdom of God on earth. It is not true that the fulfilment of this teaching is difficult ; it is not < only not difficult, but it is inevitable for a man who has comprehended it. This teaching supplies the only possible salvation from the inevitably impending destruction of personal life. Finally, not only does the fulfilment of this teaching not call us to sufferings and deprivations in this life, but it releases us from ninetenths of the sufferings we endure for the sake of the world's teaching. And, having understood this, I asked myself, Why, till now, have I not fulfilled this teaching se which offers me welfare, salvation, and happiness, but have followed quite a different teaching— that which has made me unhappy ? And the only answer that could be given was : I did not know the truth ; it was hidden from me. When the meaning of Christ's teaching revealed itself to me for the first time I had no idea that the elucidation of that meaning would cause me to repudiate the teaching of the Church ; it merely seemed to me that the Church had not reached the conclusion which

flows from Christ's teaching; but I did not 1 suspect that the new meaning of Christ's teaching which had revealed itself to me, and the deductions which followed therefrom, would separate me from the teaching of the Church. I was afraid of that, and therefore, during my researches, far from seeking for mistakes in the Church's teaching, I on the contrary intentionally shut my eyes to the propositions which seemed to me obscure and strange, but which did not contradict what I considered to be the essence of the Christian teaching. But the further I travelled in the study of the Gospels and the more clearly the meaning of Christ's teaching revealed itself to me, the more inevitable became the choice between the teaching of Christ — reasonable, clear, accordant with my conscience and giving me salvation— and ; the directly opposite teaching, disagreeing with my reason and conscience and giving me nothing except a consciousness of destruction for myself and others ; and I could not help rejecting the Church's propositions one after another. I did this unwillingly, with a struggle, and with a desire as far as possible to soften my disagreement with the Church, not to separate from it, and not to deprive myself of that most joyous support to one's faith — community with many people. But when I had finished my work I saw that, try as I might to retain at least something of the Church's teaching, nothing remained. Not only did nothing remain, but I was convinced that nothing could

remain. During the conclusion of my work theij f following incident occurred. My young son! 11 told me that two quite uneducated and scarcely I on literate people, who were our servants, had had! a dispute about a passage in a religious book in 1 ch which it was said that it is not a sin to kill 9 is criminals or kill people in war. I did not believe that this could have been printed, and || i I asked to have the book shown to me — the \ booklet which had provoked the dispute was j called A n Explanatory Prayer-book (3rd edition, c 80th thousand, Moscow, 1879). On page 163 of t that booklet is said : £ What is the sixth of God’s commandments ? 1 Thou shalt not kill. What does God forbid in this commandment ? He forbids us to kill— j that is to say, deprive men of life. Is it a sin legally to punish a criminal with death, or to kill one’s enemies in war ? It is not a sin. A criminal is deprived of life in order to stop the f great evil which he commits ; enemies are j killed in war because in war one fights for one’s ruler and country.’ And to those words is limited the explanation of why the commandment of God is repealed. I did not believe my eyes.

The disputants asked my opinion about their difference. I told the one who considered that what the book said was right that the explanation was incorrect. ‘ How is it that people print what is wrong and contrary to the law ? ’ said he. I had no reply to give him. I kept the book and looked \ it all through . The book contains ( 1 ) thirty-one ! prayers, with instructions about genuflections, and how to hold one's fingers when crossing oneself ; (2) an explanation of the Creed ; (3) a quite unexplained extract from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, which for some reason is called, ‘ Commands for obtaining bliss ; ' (4) the Ten Commandments of Moses with explanations, which for the most part annul them ; (5) hymns for Church Festivals. As I have said, I not only tried to avoid condemning the faith of the Church, but I tried to see it in the best light, and therefore did not seek for its weaknesses, and, though well acquainted with its academic, I was quite unacquainted with its pedagogic, literature. The circulation of such an enormous number of copies of a prayer-book in 1879 which evoked the doubts of the simplest people amazed me. I could not believe that the plainly pagan contents of the prayer-book (having nothing in common with Christianity) were the teaching the Church deliberately disseminated among the people. To verify this, I bought all the books published by the Synod or with its blessing, and containing brief statements of the Church's faith, for children and the common people ; and I read them through.

Their contents were for me almost new. When I had Scripture lessons, such matter did not exist. There were then, so far as I can remember, no ‘ Commands for obtaining Bliss,' nor was there the teaching that to kill is not a sin . It is not found in any of the old Russian catechisms. It is not in the catechisms of Peter Mogila, nor in the catechism of Platon,, nor in the catechism of Balyakov, nor in the |Me short Catholic Catechisms. This novelty was jPa introduced by Eilaret, who also drew up a I catechism for the use of the Army. The :P Explanatory Prayer-book is drawn up in j accord with that catechism. The fundamental j book is the 4 Long Christian Catechism of the lio1 Orthodox Church, for the use of all Orthodox j th Christians , published by order of His Imperial Majesty.’ m That book is divided into three parts : On I; t Faith, On Hope, and On Love. In the first (| part is an analysis of the Mcene Creed. In ci the second part an analysis of the Lord’s n Prayer, and the eight verses of the fifth chapter j tl of Matthew forming an introduction to the p Sermon on the Mount, and for some reason f r called £ Commands for obtaining bliss.’ (Both t these parts treat of Church dogmas, of prayers and sacraments, but give no teaching at all about life.) In the third part the duties of a Christian are set forth. In this part, called i 4 On Love,’ are set out, not the commandments of Christ, but the Ten Commandments of Moses, and these are set out as though only to teach people not to fulfil them but to act in opposition to them ; as, after each commandment, there is a reservation which cancels it. With reference to the first commandment, which orders us to honour one God, the catechism teaches us to honour angels and saints, besides, of course, the Mother of God and the three Persons of the Trinity ( Long Catechism , pp. 107,

108). With reference to the second commandment, not to make to oneself idols, the catechism teaches the obeisance before icons (p. 108). With reference to the third commandment, not to take oaths in vain, the catechism teaches people to swear on any demand of the legal authorities (p. 111). With reference to the fourth commandment, to observe Saturday, the catechism teaches us to keep not Saturday, but Sunday, and thirteen great holidays and a multitude of smaller ones, and to observe all the Fasts, including Wednesdays and Fridays (pp. 112-15). With reference to the fifth commandment, to honour one’s father and mother, the catechism teaches us to honour the Tsar and the Fatherland, one’s spiritual pastors 4 and those in various 'positions of authority3 (sic) and on honouring those in/ authority there are three pages with an enumeration of all kinds of authorities : 4 Those in authority in schools , the civil authorities , the judges , the military authorities, one's masters (sic). This last injunction refers to those who serve them and whom they command ’ (sic — pp. 116-19). I am quoting from the 1864 edition of the Catechism. Twenty years have passed since the abolition of serfdom, and no one has taken the trouble even to strike out the sentences which, with reference to the commandment of God to honour one’s parents, were included in the Catechism for the maintenance and justification of slavery. With reference to the sixth ^commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ one is taught from the first lines to kill.

Q. What is forbidden in the sixth commandment ? A. Murder, or the taking of life from one’s neighbour in any manner. Q. Is* every taking of life a sinful murder ? A. It is not sinful murder when life is taken in the fulfilment of one's duties , for instance : ;:j (i) When a criminal is punished with death by legal sentence, (ii) When enemies are killed in war for ruler and country. (The italics are in the original.) And further : Q. What occasions can be regarded as criminal murder ? A. . . . When anyone hides or releases a murderer. And this is printed in hundreds of thousands of copies, and forcibly, with threats and under fear of punishment, is instilled into all Russian people under the guise of Christian doctrine. This is what the whole of the Russian people j are taught ; this is what all the innocent angel children are taught — those children whom Christ wished not to have driven away from j him because 4 theirs is the kingdom of God ’ ; — those children whom we must resemble in order to enter the kingdom of God (resemble by not knowing such teaching) ; those children, in defence of whom Christ said, 4 Woe unto him who causeth one of these little ones to stumble.’ And it is these children to whom this is forcibly taught, and who are told that this is the only and the sacred law of God.

This is not a proclamation circulated secretly under fear of imprisonment, but a proclamation disagreement with which is punished by imprisonment. I now write this, and I am frightened that I even allow myself to say that one cannot repeal God’s chief law, written in all the codes and in all our hearts, by words which explain nothing, 4 in the fulfilment of one’s duties to King and country,’ and that people should not be taught so. Yes, that has come about which Christ foretold (Luke xi. 35, 36 ; Matt. vi. 23) : 4 Look therefore whether the light that is in thee be not darkness. If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness ! ’ The light that is within us is become darkness, and the darkness in which we live has become terrible. 4 Woe unto you,’ says Christ, 4 woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men : for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye devour widows’ houses, even while for a pretence ye make long prayers : therefore ye shall i receive greater condemnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte ; and when he is become so, ye make him worse than before. Woe unto you, ye blind guides !

4 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, : and say, If we had been in those days when the prophets were tortured, we should not have been partakers in their blood. Ye are witnesses s against yourselves, that ye are sons of them that slew the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure begun by those who were like yourselves. I will send unto you prophets and wise men ; some of them ye will kill and crucify ; and some of them ye will scourge in your assemblies, and expel from city to city ; that upon you may I come all the righteous blood shed on the I earth since Abel.5 ‘ Every blasphemy [libel] will be forgiven to men, but the libel against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven.’ All this reads as though it had been written yesterday against those who now no longer compass the * sea and the land, libelling the Holy Spirit and leading people to a belief which makes them worse, but directly, by violence, oblige them to accept that belief, and persecute and destroy all those prophets and wise men who attempt to expose their fraud.

And I became convinced that the Church’s teaching, although it calls itself Christian, is that very darkness against which Christ strove ! and ordered his disciples to strive. Christ’s teaching, like every religious teaching, has two sides : (i) The teaching of conduct — of how we should live, each separately and all together — the ethical teaching ; and (ii) the explanation of why people should live in that way, and not otherwise — the metaphysical teaching. The one is the result, and at the same time the cause, of the other. Man j should live so, because such is his destiny : or the destiny of man is such, and therefore he j should live so — these two sides of Christ’s teaching are to be found in all the religions of the world. Such is the religion of the Brahmans, Confucius, Buddha, and Moses, and such is the religion of Christ. He teaches life, how to live, and he gives the explanation why that is how one should live. But, as it was with all other teachings — Brahmanism, Judaism, Buddhism — so was it with the teaching of Christ. People lapse from the teaching of life, and among them some are found who undertake to justify that lapse. These people, seating themselves, to use Christ’s expression, in the seat of Moses, explain the metaphysical side of the teaching in such a way that the ethical demands cease to be obligatory and are replaced by an external service of God — by ritual. This phenomenon is common to all religions, but never, I think, has it been displayed so sharply as in Christianity. It has been displayed with such exceptional sharpness because the teaching of Christ is the highest teaching ; and it is the highest because the metaphysics and ethics of Christ’s teaching are so inseparably united and are so defined by one another, that to separate them is impossible without depriving the whole teaching of its meaning ; and also because Christ’s teaching is in itself a Protestantism— that is to say, a denial not merely of the ritual observances of Judaism, but of every external worship of God. And therefore in Christianity of necessity this tearing asunder completely perverts the teaching and deprives it of any meaning. And so it was. The

sundering of the teaching of life from the 1 11 explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul, who did not know the ethical teaching expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphysical-cabalistic theory foreign to Christ ; and this separation was finally completed at the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to clothe the whole heathen order of life in a Christian dress, and therefore to accept it as Christianity without altering it. From the time of Constantine — a heathen of the heathen whom the Church, for all his crimes and vices, numbers with the company of the saints — begin the Ecclesiastical Councils, and the centre of gravity of Christianity was transferred completely to the metaphysical I side of the teaching. And that metaphysical teaching, with the ceremonies that accompany it, diverging ever more and more from its fundamental meaning, reaches its present stage — a teaching which explains the most incomprehensible mysteries of life in heaven, and gives a most complex ritual of divine service, but supplies no religious teaching concerning \ our life on earth. All religions except Church Christianity demand from their adherents, besides ceremonies, the performance of certain good actions and abstention from certain bad ones. Judaism demands circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, the giving of alms, the observance of the j Jubilee year, and much else. Mohammedanism demands circumcision, prayer five times a day,

tithes for the poor, worship at the prophet's tomb, and much else. And so with all the other religions. Whether these demands are good or bad, at any rate they demand certain actions. Only pseudo-Christianity demands nothing. There is nothing that it is definitely obligatory for a Christian to do, or from which he must definitely abstain, if one does not count fasts and prayers which the Church itself admits to be non-obligatory. All that is necessary for the pseudo-Christian are the sacraments. But the sacrament is not done by the believer himself, it is performed over him by others. A pseudoChristian is not bound to do anything, and is not bound to abstain from anything, in order to be saved, but all that is necessary is performed over him by the Church : he is baptized, and anointed, and communion is given him, as well as extreme unction, and absolution is even granted on an inarticulate confession, and he is prayed for — and saved ! The Christian Church since the time of Constantine has not demanded any actions from its members. It has not even put forward any demands of abstinence from anything. The Christian Church recognized and sanctified everything that existed in the heathen world : it recognized and sanctified divorce, and slavery, and courts of justice, and all the state authorities that existed, and wars and executions, and it only demanded at baptism a verbal renunciation of

I evil, and that only at first ; afterwards, with the introduction of infant baptism, it ceased even to demand that. The Church, acknowledging Christ's teaching in words, directly rejected it in life. Instead of guiding the life of the world, the Church, to make itself agreeable to the world, interpreted Christ's metaphysical teaching in such a way that no demands relating to life result from it ; so that it did not prevent people from living as they had done before. The Church yielded to the world, and, having done so once, it followed the world's way. The world p did whatever it liked, allowing the Church, as best it could, to shape its explanations of the meaning of life accordingly. The world in everything arranged its life contrary to Christ’s teaching, and the Church devised allegories to show that people, while living contrary to Christ's law, live in accord with it. And finally the life of the world became worse than heathen life had been, and the Church not merely justified that life, but asserted that it was in agreement with Christ's teaching. But a time came when the light of Christ's true teaching which was in the Gospels, despite the fact that the Church, feeling its own falsity, tried to hide it (by forbidding translations of the Bible)— a time came when this light (through those who were called sectarians, and even through worldly freethinkers) made its way among the people and the falsity of the Church's teaching became evident to men, and they began to alter their way of life (which the Church had justified) to life on the basis of Christ's teaching, which had made its way to them independently of the Church.

So people themselves, apart from the Church, abolished slavery, which the Church had justified, and religious executions,1 and abolished the power (sanctified by the Church) of the Emperors and Popes, and have now begun the task which presents itself next in turn : the abolition of property and of the State.2 And the Church did not defend, and cannot defend, any of these ! things, because the abolition of these wrongs in life took place, and is now taking place, on the basis of that same Christian teaching which was preached and is preached by the Church, however it tries to pervert it. The guidance of the life of man has emancipated itself from the Church and established | itself independently of the Church. The Church retains an explanation, but an sxplanation of what ? The metaphysical explanation of a teaching has significance when the beaching of life which it explains exists. But bhe Church has no teaching of life left. It had Duly an explanation of a life it instituted once ipon a time, and which no longer exists. If die Church still retains an explanation of that ife which used to exist (like the explanation in lie Catechism that officials ought to kill) no

1 Such as the autos-da-fe of the Inquisition. 2 This sentence is remarkable, not only because it ;7as written thirty-three years before the Bolshevik Revolution (which in theory, though not in practice, ontemplated the abolition of the State) ; but also >ecause it shows that in this (almost the first of his idactie works) Tolstoy went to the ultimate limit of is theory of Christian Anarchy, which he spent the renaming twenty-six years of his life in elaborating. one any longer believes it. And the Church ha? nothing left but cathedrals, icons, brocade vestments, and words.1 The Church carried the light of Christian teach ing of life through eighteen centuries, and wishing to hide it under its garments, has itself am been burnt up by that flame. The world, with! p its arrangements, sanctified by the Church, has repudiated the Church in the name of those very principles of Christianity which the Church has ft reluctantly borne ; and the world now lives m without the Church. That fact is accomplished and to hide it is impossible. All that is really^ alive — and does not linger on in angry dejection, not really living but merely hindering others tai from doing so — all that really lives in our Euro pean world has rejected the Church, and all churches, and lives its own life independently of the Church. And let it not be said that this is so in ‘ rotten western Europe * 2 ; our Russia, with its millions of rationalist Christians, educated and uneducated, who have rejected Church teaching, proves beyond dispute that Russia, in regard to the repudiation of the Church, is, thank God, far more 4 rotten ' than the rest of Europe.

1 Before the generation had passed away to whom Tolstoy first issued thi3 book the Church in Russia had been disendowed and disestablished, and the words ‘ Religion is the people’s opium ’ were painted, by order of the authorities, in large letters on the walls of the churches. 2 A favourite phrase of the Slavophils, a Stephen- Graham-like folk, who regarded Russia and her institutions as far superior to anything existing in the democratic West. ' All that is alive is independent of the Church. The power of Government rests on tradition, on science, on popular election, on brute force, and on what you will, only not on the Church. Wars and the relations of the Powers are arranged on the principle of race, balance of power, or what you will, but not on Church principles. The State institutions plainly ignore the Church. The idea that the Church could, in our times, be the foundation of the law or of property is merely ridiculous. Science not only does not co-operate with the Church teaching, but inadvertently, involuntarily, in the course of its development is always ! hostile to the Church. Art, which formerly served the Church exclusively, has now quite departed from it.

It is not enough that life has completely emancipated itself from the Church. Life has no relation to the Church ; it feels merely contempt for her so long as she does not meddle in the affairs of life, and nothing but hatred as soon as she tries to remind it of her former rights. If the form which we call the Church still exists, it is only because people fear to smash a vessel which once held precious contents ; only so is it possible to explain the existence in our century of the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the various Protestant Churches. All the Churches — the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant — stand like sentinels laboriously on guard over a prisoner who has long since escaped, and is now walking about among the sentinels and even fighting them. Every thing that now really animates the world— Socialism, Communism, theories of political me economy, utilitarianism, the freedom anc fit equality of individuals, of classes, and of women la; all man's moral conceptions, the sanctity o: in labour, the sanctity of reason, of science and oi; dir art, all that moves the world, and that the far Church regards as inimical, all are parts of that! nil teaching which the Church herself has un- mi wittingly handed on together with the teaching i of Christ which she sought to conceal.

In our time the life of the world goes its own to way quite independently of the Church's teach-; an ing. That teaching has lagged so far behind! n that the men of the world no longer hear the! voices of church teachers. Nor is there any-! thing to hear, for the Church only offers ex- ij planations of an arrangement of life which the! oc world has already outgrown, and which has f already ceased to exist or is now being irresistibly b destroyed. ] pi People went rowing in a boat, and a helmsman ti< steered them. The people came to believe in ® their helmsman, and he guided them well ; but re the time came when the good helmsman was ej replaced by another, -who did not steer. But : i ai the boat glided on quickly and easily. At first ; |a it was not noticed that the new helmsman was i not steering, and the people were only pleased i e] that the boat moved quickly. But afterwards, 0; having realized that the new helmsman was ^ useless, they began to laugh at him, and dis- j 8, missed him. k This would not have mattered, but the ] trouble was that people, moved by their annoylance with the useless helmsman, forgot that without a helmsman one does not know which way one is going. That is what has happened in our Christian society. The Church does not direct, and it is easy to drift, and we have gone far ; and all the successes of science that our nineteenth century is so proud of are but the mileage we have gone without a rudder. We advance, but know not whither. We live and get through our life, and positively do not know wdiy. But it does not do to drift and row not knowing one's direction, and one must not live and pass through life not knowing why.

If men did nothing themselves but were placed by some external force in the position they occupy, they might, in reply to the question, c Why are you in this position ? ’ quite reasonably reply, We do not know, but we find ourselves placed as we are. But people make their position for themselves, for others, and in particular for their children ; and therefore they must reply to the questions : Why do you enroll others, and have been yourselves enrolled, into armies of millions, with which you kill and mutilate one another ? Why have you spent, and why are you spending, tremendous human energies, expressed* in milliards, on the building of towns unnecessary and harmful to you ? Why do you arrange your absurd law-courts, and send people you consider criminals from France to Cayenne, from Russia to Siberia, and from England to Australia,1 knowing yourselves tha this is unreasonable ? Why do you abandon th< itto field-work you love for work in factories anc P workshops which you yourselves dislike ? WI13 ills do you educate your children so that they shoulcj continue this life of which you do not approve Why do you do all this ?

These questions cannot be left unanswered. Even had all these things been pleasant things you like doing, you should have given a reason for doing them. But as they are terribly difficult things, and you do them only with effort and with murmurs, it is impossible for you not to consider why you do them all. It is neces sary either to cease to do all this or else to explain why we do it. Without a reply to that question, people never have lived, and never can live. And such a reply people have never been without. The Jews lived as they did — that is to say, fought, executed people, built the temple, and arranged their whole life in one way and not in another, because this was all prescribed by their law which, according to their conviction, had come down to them from God Himself. So it is with a Hindu or a Chinaman, and so it was with a Roman, and is with a Mohammedan ; and the same was the case with a Christian till a hundred years ago ; and so now it is for the 1 As a matter of fact, banishment to Australia had ceased some twenty years before Tolstoy wrote this, but the memory of legal barbarities committed in distant countries lingers long in men’s minds, as is illustrated by frequent references in England to the knout, the use of which was abolished generations ago.

masses of ignorant Christians. To those questions these ignorant Christians now reply that army-service, wars, law-courts and executions, all exist by God’s law, given to us by the Church. This world is a fallen world. All the evil that exists, exists by the will of God as a punishment for the sins of the world, and we therefore cannot remedy this evil.1 We can only save our souls by faith, sacraments, prayers, and by submission to the will of God, as taught us by the Church. The Church teaches us that every Christian should submit absolutely to the Tsar, the anointed of God, and to all officials, appointed by him, and should defend by violence their own and other people’s property, and should fight, execute, and endure execution, at the will of those God-appointed authorities. Whether such explanations be good or bad, they explained for a believing Christian — as was the case for a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan— all the peculiarities of life ; and a man did not renounce his reason when living according to the law he accepted as divine. But now a time has come when only the most ignorant people believe in these explanations, and the number of such people diminishes every day and every hour. It is quite impossible to

1 The amazing submission shown by the Russian I people to the misrule they suffered under the Tsars for centuries, and, stranger still, to the greater oppression they have endured for three years since the Bolsheviks seized power and organized the Extraordinary Comimittee (which is a twentieth- century Inquisition), may be partly explained by the habit of submission deeply engrained in them, to which Tolstoy alludes. arrest this movement. All men irresistibly follow those who go in advance, and all wil reach the place where the advanced people nowj stand. But the advanced people are standing at the brink of a precipice. Those in front are; in a terrible position; they are shaping life |. tk for themselves and preparing life for all who follow them, and are completely ignorant of why they do what they do. Not one civilized and progressive man is now in a position to reply to the plain question, Why do you live the life you are living ? Why are you doing all that you are doing ? I have tried to ask about this, and have questioned hundreds of people, and have never received a direct reply. Always, instead of a direct reply to the personal question, Why do you live so, and do so ?

I have received an answer, not to my question, but to one I had not put. A believing Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox Churchman, in reply to the question why he lives as he is living — that is to say, in contradiction to that teaching of the Christ-God which he professes, always, instead of a straight answer, begins to speak of the woful extent of incredulity in the present generation ; about the bad people who promote infidelity, and of the significance and the future of the true Church. But why he himself does not do what his faith bids him do he does not say. Instead of replying about himself, he speaks about the general condition of humanity, and about the Church just as though his own life was of no importance to him at all, and he was concerned only with Vc^ipn of the whole of humanity and with what he calls the Church. A philosopher, of whatever denomination — idealist, spiritualist, pessimist, or positivist — in reply to the question why he lives as he does, that is to say, not in accord with his philosophical teaching, will always, instead of replying to that question, speak about the progress of humanity, the historic law of that progress, which he has discovered and in accord with which mankind strives towards its welfare. But he never replies directly to the question why he himself, in his own life, does not do what he considers reasonable. The philosopher, like the believer, seems as though he were not concerned with his own life, but only with observing the general laws of humanity.