We must necessarily derive the commandment not to resist evil by force from the law of love. For this demands that either a sure, indisputable criterion of evil be found, or all violent resistance to evil be abandoned.[934] "Hitherto it has been the business now of the pope, now of an emperor or king, now of an assembly of elected representatives, now of the whole nation, to decide what was to be rated as an evil and combated by violent resistance. But there have always been men, both without and within the State, who have not acknowledged as binding upon them either the decisions that were given out as divine commandments or the decisions of the men who were clothed with sanctity or the institutions that were supposed to represent the will of the people; men who regarded as good what to the powers that be appeared evil, and who, in opposition to the force of these powers, likewise made use of force. The men who were clothed with sanctity regarded as an evil what appeared good to the men and institutions that were clothed with secular authority, and the combat grew ever sharper and sharper. Thus it came to what it has come to to-day, to the complete obviousness of the fact that there is not and cannot be a generally binding external definition of evil."[935] But from this follows the necessity of accepting the solution given by Christ.[936] According to Tolstoi, the precept of non-resistance must not be taken "as if it forbade every combat against evil."[937] It forbids only the combating of evil by force.[938] But this it forbids in the broadest sense. It refers, therefore, not only to evil practised against ourselves, but also to evil practised against our fellow-men;[939] when Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, he was defending "not himself but his beloved divine Teacher, but Christ forbade him outright and said 'All who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"[940] Nor does the precept say that only a part of men are under obligation "to submit without a contest to what is prescribed to them by certain authorities,"[941] but it forbids "everybody, therefore even those in whom power is vested, and these especially, to use force in any case against anybody."[942] 3.--LAW I. _For love's sake, particularly on the ground of the commandment not to resist evil by force, Tolstoi rejects law; not unconditionally, indeed, but as an institution for the more highly developed peoples of our time._ To be sure, he speaks only of enacted laws; but he means all law,[943] for he rejects on principle every norm based on the will of men,[944] upheld by human force,[945] especially by courts,[946] capable of deviating from the moral law,[947] of being different in different territories,[948] and of being at any time arbitrarily changed.[949]