"There is no escape from this terrible moral responsibility but by a conscientious withdrawal from such government, and an uncompromising protest against so much of its fundamental creed and constitutional law, as is decidedly anti-Christian. He must cease to be its pledged supporter, and approving dependent."[105] Like the Mennonites, he saw that the reason that governments were unchristian was that the people themselves were not Christian; but unlike the Mennonites he maintained that they might eventually become so, and that it was the duty of the Christian to hasten the day of their complete conversion. "This," he said, "is not to be done by voting at the polls, by seeking influential offices in the government and binding ourselves to anti-Christian political compacts. It is to be done by pure Christian precepts faithfully inculcated, and pure Christian examples on the part of those who have been favored to receive and embrace the highest truths."[106] The Mennonites believed that man was essentially depraved; Ballou believed that he was perfectible.[107] FOOTNOTES: [102] Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 696. [103] Ballou, _Christian Non-Resistance_, 3. [104] _Ibid._, 2-25. [105] _Ibid._, 18. [106] _Ibid._, 223-224. [107] Perhaps this is the point at which to insert a footnote on Henry Thoreau, whose essay on "Civil Disobedience" is said to have influenced Gandhi. Although he lived in the same intellectual climate that produced Garrison and Ballou, he was not a non-resistant on principle. For instance, he supported the violent attack upon slave holders by John Brown just before the Civil War. He did come to substantially the same conclusions, however, on government. He refused even to pay a tax to a government which carried on activities which he considered immoral, such as supporting slavery, or carrying on war. On one occasion he said, "They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it." Essentially, Thoreau was a philosophical anarchist, who placed his faith entirely in the individual, rather than in any sort of organized social action. See the essay on him in Parrington, II, 400-413; and his own essay on "Civil Disobedience" in _The Writings of Henry David Thoreau_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), IV, 356-387. Tolstoy Many people regard the writings of Count Leo Tolstoy as the epitome of the doctrine of non-resistance. Tolstoy arrived at his convictions after a long period of inner turmoil, and published them in _My Religion_ in 1884. In the years that followed, his wide correspondence introduced him to many others who had held the same views. He was especially impressed with the 1838 statement of Garrison, and with the writings of Ballou, with whom he entered into correspondence directly.[108]