"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the State,"[982] annihilates all government.[983] The State offends against love, particularly against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[984] And not only this; in founding a dominion[985] the State furthermore offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[986] it is therefore to be rejected even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. "That the Christian teaching has an eye only to the redemption of the individual, and does not relate to public questions and State affairs, is a bold and unfounded assertion."[987] "To every honest, earnest man in our time it must be clear that true Christianity--the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, love--is incompatible with the State and its haughtiness, its deeds of violence, its capital punishments and wars."[988] "The State is an idol";[989] its objectionableness is independent of its form, be this "absolute monarchy, the Convention, the Consulate, the empire of a first or third Napoleon or yet of a Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or the republic."[990]--Tolstoi carries this out into detail. 1. The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch. The State is rule. Government in the State is "an association of men who do violence to the rest."[991] "All governments, the despotic and the liberal alike, have in our time become what Herzen has so aptly called a Jenghis Khan with telegraphs."[992] The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence not in order to overcome evil, but solely for their advantage or from caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they believe that it is practised for their good,--that is, in order to liberate them from evil,--but only because they cannot free themselves from it."[993] "If Nice is united with France, Lorraine with Germany, Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divided, if both Ireland and India are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill the Africans, expel the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in Russia, it is not because this is good or necessary or useful for men and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in whom the power is vested."[994]