"If men--yes, if even a few men--would do this, the antiquated public opinion would at once fall of itself, and a new, living, present-day one would arise."[1136] "Not billions of rubles, not millions of soldiers, no institutions, wars, or revolutions, have so much power as the simple declaration of a free man that he considers something to be right or wrong. If a free man speaks out honestly what he thinks and feels, in the midst of thousands who in word and act stand for the very contrary, one might think he must remain isolated. But usually it is otherwise; all, or most, have long been privately thinking and feeling in the same way; and then what to-day is still an individual's new opinion will perhaps to-morrow be already the general opinion of the majority."[1137] "If we would only stop lying and acting as if we did not see the truth, if we would only testify to the truth that summons us and boldly confess it, it would at once turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, millions, of men in the same situation as ourselves, that they see the truth like us, are afraid like us of remaining isolated if they confess it, and are only waiting, like us, for the rest to testify to it."[1138] II. To bring about the change and put the new condition in the place of law, the State, and property, it is further requisite that the men who have learned to know the truth should conform their lives to their knowledge, and, in particular, that they should refuse obedience to the State. 1. Men are to bring about the change themselves. They are "no longer to wait for somebody to come and help them, be it Christ in the clouds with the sound of the trumpet, be it a historic law or a differential or integral law of forces. Nobody will help us if we do not help ourselves."[1139] "I have been told a story that happened to a courageous commissary of police. He came into a village where they had applied for soldiers on account of an outbreak among the peasants. In the spirit of Nicholas the First he proposed to make an end of the rising by his personal presence alone. He had a few cart-loads of sticks brought, gathered all the peasants in a barn, and shut himself in with them. By his shouts he succeeded in so cowing the peasants that they obeyed him and began to beat each other at his command. So they beat each other till there was found a simple-minded peasant who did not obey, and who called out to his fellows that they should not beat each other either. Only then did the beating cease, and the official made haste to get away. The advice of this simple-minded peasant" should be followed by the men of our time.[1140] 2. But it is not by violence that men are to bring about the change. "Revolutionary enemies fight the government from outside; Christianity does not fight at all, but wrecks its foundations from within."[1141]