The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / MiscellaniesTolstoy, Leo, graf
Religion
The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
And thus the assertion of the defenders of the political structure
that, if the violence of the state be abolished, the evil men will
rule over the good, not only does not prove that this (the ruling
of the bad over the good) is dangerous, for it is precisely what is
taking place now, but, on the contrary, proves that the violence
of the state, which gives the bad a chance to rule over the good,
is the very evil which it is desirable to destroy, and which is
continuously destroyed by life itself.
"But even if it were true that the violence of the state will come
to an end when those who are in power shall become Christian enough
to renounce the power of their own choice, and there shall no longer
be found any men who are prepared to take their places, and if it is
true that this process is taking place," say the defenders of the
existing order, "when will that be? If eighteen hundred years have
passed and there are still so many volunteers who are ready to rule,
and so few who are ready to submit, there is no probability that
this will happen very soon, or ever at all.
"If there are, as there have been among all men, such as prefer to
refuse power rather than to use it, the supply of men who prefer
ruling to submitting is so great that it is hard to imagine the time
when it shall be exhausted.
"For this process of the Christianization of all men to take place,
for all men one after another to pass over from the pagan concept of
life to the Christian, and voluntarily renounce power and wealth,
and for no one to desire to make use of them, it is necessary that
not only all those rude, semisavage men, who are entirely incapable
of adopting Christianity and following it, and of whom there are
always such a great number amidst every Christian society, but also
all savage and non-Christian nations in general, of whom there are
so many outside the Christian society, should be made Christian. And
so, even if we admit that the process of Christianization will some
day be accomplished in the case of all men, we must assume, judging
from how much the matter has advanced in eighteen hundred years,
that this will happen in several times eighteen hundred years,--and
so it is impossible and useless to think now of the impossible
abolition of power, and all we should think of is that the power
should be vested in the best of hands."
Thus retort the defenders of the existing order. And this reflection
would be quite correct if the transition of men from one concept of
life to another took place only by force of the one process where
every man learns individually and one after another by experience
the vanity of power, and by an inner way reaches the Christian
truths.
This process takes place without cessation, and by this way men one
after another pass over to the side of Christianity.
But men pass over to the side of Christianity not by this inner path
alone; there is also an external method, with which the gradualness
of this transition is destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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